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ended it."
"Curacao? Then that pass for yourself and wife--By the way, that and your coat are over in the thicket, where I dropped them."
"Thank you. But it doesn't say 'wife.' It says simply 'a woman.'"
"And you were encumbering yourself with an unknown leper, at a time like this, just as an act of human kindness?" There was something almost reverential in Carroll's voice.
"Scientific interest, in part. Besides, she wasn't wholly unknown. She's a sort of cousin of Raimonda's."
Carroll's mind flew back to his fatally misinterpreted conversation with the young Caracunan.
"What did he mean by letting me think that you shouldn't associate with Miss Polly?"
"Oh, he had the usual erroneous dread of leprosy contagion, I suppose."
"May I ask you another question, Mr. Per--I beg your pardon, Dr. Pruyn?" said the visitor, almost timidly.
"Perkins will do." The other smiled wanly. "Ask me anything you want to."
"Why did you run away that day on the tram-car?"
"To avoid trouble, of course."
"You? Why, you go about searching for dangerous and difficult jobs. That won't do!"
"Not at all. It's only when I can't get away from them. But I couldn't risk arrest then. Some one would surely have recognized me as Luther Pruyn. You see, I've been here before."
"Then I don't see why they didn't identify you, anyway."
"Three years ago I was much heavier, and wore a full beard. Then these glasses, besides being invaluable for protection, are a pretty thorough disguise."
"So they are. But the game is up now."
"Yes." The scientist drew the sheet back over the dead woman. "I suppose the sharp-shooters who did the job will report me safely out of the way. It's only a question of when the burial party will come for me."
"Then, why are we waiting?" cried Carroll.
"I couldn't leave her lying here," replied the other simply.
The sound of rhythmical labor came back to Carroll's memory.
"You were diggin