ward. She turned pale, but bent over her patient and said nothing. "It is fearful to think!" I groaned out at last; "for us who know all--that poor Le Geyt will be hanged for it! Hanged for attempting to protect his children!" "He will NOT be hanged," my witch answered, with the same unquestioning confidence as ever. "Why not?" I asked, astonished once more at this bold prediction. She went on bandaging the arm of the patient whom she was attending. "Because... he will commit suicide," she replied, without moving a muscle. "How do you know that?" She stuck a steel safety-pin with deft fingers into the roll of lint. "When I have finished my day's work," she answered slowly, still continuing the bandage, "I may perhaps find time to tell you." CHAPTER IV THE EPISODE OF THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT COMMIT SUICIDE After my poor friend Le Geyt had murdered his wife, in a sudden access of uncontrollable anger, under the deepest provocation, the police naturally began to inquire for him. It is a way they have; the police are no respecters of persons; neither do they pry into the question of motives. They are but poor casuists. A murder is for them a murder, and a murderer a murderer; it is not their habit to divide and distinguish between case and case with Hilda Wade's analytical accuracy. As soon as my duties at St. Nathaniel's permitted me, on the evening of the discovery, I rushed round to Mrs. Mallet's, Le Geyt's sister. I had been detained at the hospital for some hours, however, watching a critical case; and by the time I reached Great Stanhope Street I found Hilda Wade, in her nurse's dress, there before me. Sebastian, it seemed, had given her leave out for the evening. She was a supernumerary nurse, attached to his own observation-cots as special attendant for scientific purposes, and she could generally get an hour or so whenever she required it. Mrs. Mallet had been in the breakfast-room with Hilda before I arrived; but as I reached the house she rushed upstairs to wash her red eyes and compose herself a little before the strain of meeting me; so I had the opportunity for a few words alone first with my prophetic companion.