Her finger was on the man who stood poised ready to jump.  With an awful recoil, I drew back and suppressed a scream.  It was on the tip of my tongue to cry out, “Why, that’s my father’s murderer!”

But, happily, with a great effort of will I restrained myself.  I saw it all at a glance.  That, then, was the meaning of Dr. Marten’s warning!  No wonder, I thought, the shock had disorganised my whole brain.  If Minnie was right, I was in love once with that man.  And I must have seen my lover murder my father!

For I didn’t doubt, from what Minnie said, I had really once loved Dr. Ivor.  Horrible and ghastly as it might be to realise it, I didn’t doubt it was the truth.  I had once loved the very man I was now bent on pursuing as a criminal and a murderer!

“You’re sure that’s him, Minnie?” I cried, trying to conceal my agitation.  “You’re sure that’s Courtenay Ivor, the man stooping on the wagon-top?”

Minnie looked at me, smiling.  She thought I was asking for a very different reason.

“Yes, that’s him, right enough, dear,” she said.  “I could tell him among a thousand.  Why, the Moore hand alone would be quite enough to know him by.  It’s just like my own.  We’ve all of us got it—­except yourself.  I always said you weren’t one of us.  You’re a regular born Callingham.”

I gazed at her fixedly.  I could hardly speak.

“Oh, Minnie!” I cried once more, “have you ... have you any photograph of him?”

“No, we haven’t, dear,” Minnie answered.

“That was a fad of Courtenay’s, you know.  Wherever he went, he’d never be photographed.  He was annoyed that day that your father should have taken him unawares.  He hated being ‘done,’ he said.  He’s so handsome and so nice, but he’s not a bit conceited.  And he was such a splendid bicyclist!  He rode over and back on his bicycle that day, and then ran in all the races as if it were nothing.”

A light burst over me at once.  This was circumstantial evidence.  The murderer who disappeared as if by magic the moment his crime was committed must have come and gone all unseen, no doubt, on his bicycle.  He must have left it under the window till his vile deed was done, and then leapt out upon it in a second and dashed off whence he came like a flash of lightning.

It was a premeditated crime, in that case, not the mere casual result of a sudden quarrel.

I must find out this man now, were it only to relieve my own sense of mystery.

“Minnie,” I said once more, screwing up my courage to ask, “where’s Dr. Ivor now?  I mean—­that is to say—­in what part of Canada?”

Minnie looked at me and laughed.

“There, I told you so!” she said, merrily.  “It’s not the least bit of use your pretending you’re not in love with him, Una.  Why, just look how you tremble!  You’re as white as a ghost!  And then you say you don’t care for poor Courtenay!  I forget the exact name of the place where he lives, but I’ve got it in my desk, and I can tell you to-morrow.—­Oh, yes; it’s Palmyra, on the Canada Pacific.  I suppose you want to write to him.  Or perhaps you mean to go out and offer yourself bodily.”