The Amalgamated Brotherhood of Spooks

hope you are proud of yourself, venting your spite on an in­nocent woman and two hundred and eighty-three defenceless girls."

He laughed.

"It was a pretty successful haunt," he said; "and possibly, now that Mrs. Hawkins and your daughters--"

"Who?" I cried. "Mrs. What, and my which?"

"Your wife and children," he replied. "Now that the local chapter has attended to them, maybe you'll apologize to me for your boorish behavior at Florence."

"Those people were nothing to me," said I. "That was a boarding-school you have driven crazy. I was merely coming here to lecture--"

I immediately perceived my mistake. He could now easily discover my identity.

"Oho!" said he, with a broad, grim smile. "Then you lied to me at Florence, and you are not Hawkins, but the man they call the spook Boswell among us?"

"Yes, I am not Hawkins, and I am the other," I retorted. "Make the most of it."

"I thought that was rather a large family of girls for one man to have,"