take its course and Lucile’s hands would be free.

Yet something urged her past the policeman, down a narrow street, round a corner, up a second street, down a third, still narrower, and up to the door of the smallest, shabbiest cottage of the whole tumble-down lot.

The child had entered here. Lucile paused to consider and, while considering, caught the gleam of light through a torn window shade. The cottage was one story and a garret. The window was within her range of vision. After a glance from left to right, she stepped beneath the porch, which gave her an opportunity to peer through the opening. Here, deep in the shadows, she might look on at the scene within without herself being observed by those within or by passers-by on the street.

The picture which came to her through the hole in the shade was so different from that which one might expect that she barely suppressed a gasp. In the room, which was scrupulously clean and tidy, there were but two persons, the child and the old man who had visited the library. Through the grate of a small stove a fire gleamed. Before this fire, all unabashed, the child stripped the water-soaked clothing from her meager body, then stood chafing her limbs, which were purple with cold.

The old man appeared all absorbed in his inspection of the book just placed in his hands. Lucile was not surprised to recognize it as the second Shakespeare. From turning it over and over, he paused to open it and peer at its inside cover. Not satisfied with this, he ran his finger over the upper, outside corner.

It was then that Lucile saw for the first time the thing she had felt while in the library in the dark. A small square of paper, yellow with age, was in that corner, and in its center was a picture of a gargoyle. A strange looking creation was this gargoyle. It was with such as these the ancients were wont to decorate their mansions. With a savage face that was half man and half lion, he possessed the paws of a beast and the wings of a great bird. About two sides of this picture was a letter L.

“So that was it,” she breathed.

The next moment her attention was attracted by a set of shelves. These ran across one entire end of the room and, save for a single foot of space, were entirely filled with books. The striking fact to be noted was that, if one were able to judge from the appearance of their books, they must all of them be of great age.

“A miser of books,” she breathed.

Searching these shelves, she felt sure she located the other missing volume of Shakespeare. This decision was confirmed at last as the tottering old man made his way to the shelf and filled some two inches of the remaining vacant shelf-space by placing the newly-acquired book beside its mate.

After this he stood there for a moment looking at the two books. The expression on his face was startling. In the twinkling of an eye, it appeared to prove her charge of book miser to be false. This was not the look of a Shylock.

“More like a father glorying over the return of a long-lost child,” she told herself.

As she stood there puzzling over this, the room went suddenly dark. The occupants of the house had doubtless gone to another part of the cottage to retire for the night. She was left with two alternatives: to call a policeman and have the place raided or to return quietly to the university and think the thing through. She chose the latter course.

After discovering the number of the house and fixing certain landmarks in her mind, she returned to the elevated station.

“They’ll not dispose of the books, that’s certain,” she told herself. “The course to be taken in the future will come to me.”

Stealing silently into her room on her return, she was surprised to find her roommate awake, robed in a kimono and pacing the floor.

“Why, Florence!” she breathed.

“Why, yourself!” Florence turned upon her. “Where’ve you been in all this storm? Five minutes more and I should have called the matron. She would have notified the police and then things would have been fine. Grand! Can you see it in the morning papers? ‘Beautiful co-ed mysteriously disappears from university dormitory in storm. No trace of her yet found. Roommate says no cause for suicide.’”

“Oh!” gasped Lucile, “you wouldn’t have!”

“What else could I do? How was I to know what had happened? You hadn’t breathed a word. You—”

Florence sat down upon her bed, dug her bare toes into the rug and stared at her roommate. For once in her life, strong, dependable, imperturbable Florence was excited.

“I know,” said Lucile, removing her watersoaked dress and stockings and chafing her benumbed feet. “I—I guess I should have told you about it, but it was something I was quite sure you wouldn’t understand, so I didn’t, that’s all. But now—now I’ve got to tell someone or I’ll burst, and I’d rather tell you than anyone else I know.”

“Thanks,” Florence smiled. “Just for that I’ll help you into dry clothes, then you can tell me in comfort.”

The clock struck three and the girls were still deep in the discussion of the mystery.

“One thing is important,” said Florence. “That is the value of the Shakespeare. Perhaps it’s not worth so terribly much after all.”

“Perhaps not,” Lucile wrinkled her brow, “but I am awfully afraid it is. Let’s see—who could tell me? Oh, I know—Frank Morrow!”

“Who’s Frank Morrow?”

“He’s the best authority on old books there is in the United States to-day. He’s right here in this city. Got a cute little shop on the fifteenth floor of the Marshal Annex building. He’s an old friend of my father. He’ll tell me anything I need to know about books.”

“All right, you’d better see him to-morrow, or I mean to-day. And now for three winks.”

Florence threw off her kimono and leaped into bed. Lucile followed her example and the next instant the room was dark.

CHAPTER IV
WHAT THE GARGOYLE MIGHT TELL

Frank Morrow was the type of man any girl might be glad to claim as a friend. He had passed his sixty-fifth birthday and for thirty-five years he had been a dealer in old books, yet he was neither stooped nor near-sighted. A man of broad shoulders and robust frame, he delighted as much in a low morning score at golf as he did in the discovery of a rare old book. His hair was white but his cheeks retained much of their ruddy glow. His quiet smile gave to all who visited his shop a feeling of genuine welcome which they did not soon forget.

His shop, like himself, reflected the new era which has dawned in the old book business. Men have come to realize that age lends worth to books that possessed real worth in the beginning and they are coming to house them well. On one of the upper floors of a modern business block Frank Morrow’s shop was flooded with sunshine and fresh air. A potted plant bloomed on his desk. The books, arranged neatly without a painful effort at order, presented the appearance of some rich gentleman’s library. A darker corner, a room by itself, to the right and back, suggested privacy and seclusion and here Frank Morrow’s finds were kept. Many of them were richly bound and autographed.

The wise and the rich of the world passed through Frank Morrow’s shop, for in his brain there rested knowledge which no other living man could impart. Did a bishop wish to purchase an out-of-print book for his ecclesiastical library, he came to Frank