Had her errand been one of search rather than of arrangement?
and was this crumpled letter the sole result of a half-hour's ransacking in an attic room at the dead of night?
I was fain to think so, for in the course of another half-hour her light went out.

Relieved that she had not left the house, I was still anxious as to the cause of her strange conduct.
Mayor Packard did not come in till daybreak.

He found me waiting for him in the lower hall.
"Well ?" he eagerly inquired.
"Mrs.Packard is asleep, I hope.

A shrill laugh, ringing through the house shortly after her return, gave her a nervous shock and she begged that she might be left undisturbed till morning." He turned from hanging up his overcoat, and gave me a short stare.
"A laugh!" he repeated.

"Who could have laughed like that?
We are not a very jolly crowd here." "I don't know, sir.