I had reported my movements to Mr.Earl as often as once a week and I received letters from him frequently, encouraging me to continue the search and enclosing money with which to do so.

But although I had written often to Hester Chaffin no word from her ever reached me.

I was tired of this fruitless quest among strangers, so far from the little that I held dear, and I was on the point of giving up when this paragraph fell under my eye in a Montreal newspaper: A MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER.
"One who has ever passed the city of Ogdensburg by steamer will no doubt recall a large gambrel-roofed house standing near the water's edge, just out of the town, surrounded by towering trees and enclosed on all sides by a wall nearly as high as the eaves of the building.

The wall suggests an asylum, a house of detention or some like place set apart for the unfortunate members of society.

In reality, however, it is the residence of a mysterious recluse of the name of Lane, who shut himself up there nearly eighteen years ago and has since been rarely seen.