"You think on the whole that it might be as well to go somewhereelse for a few months?"

The physician got up, and Herring took the hint and went out, sayingnothing further upon the subject.

By the time Percival and the others had returned he was packing up,and when Jack and Dick came back from Riverton he had gone, andMerritt and one or two others had gone with him.

Shortly after this Jack and Percival, while in Riverton one day,came across Gabrielle, the former nurse maid for Mrs. Van der Donk,and Percival, recognizing her exclaimed shortly:

"How do you do? Will you tell me how you happened to put that watchin my friend's pocket the evening of the fire at your employer's house?"

"What you say?" asked the girl in the high key customary with her."I do not know you, I sometimes have not meet you before."

"But you know me," exclaimed Jack. "You remember the watch with thediamonds on the case that your friend gave you? You were talkingabout it on the banks of the kill one evening and exclaimed you hadlost it. You did not lose it, did you? Didn't you put it in mypocket?"