"I believe, after talking with Nora, that the enemies are foreign ones," continued Foster Kipp. "Father has within the last five years received letters at intervals which came from some remote corners of the world. One of them, I saw by a fragment of the envelope, came from London, another from Paris and a third from Melbourne. This would seem to indicate the restless nature of the enemy. But the trail leads across the water, Mr. Broadbrim. I am sure of this. It may be a long one, but you are equal to it."
Old Broadbrim stood at the door of the mansion and was looking into Foster's face when he heard a sound in another room, and Miss Nora bounded forward.
"What do you think?" she cried, stopping before the detective. "Is it to be a trail across the water?"
"It looks that way, miss," was the answer.
"Then take this for luck—take it with the prayers of Nora Doon," and she pressed into the detective's hand a little packet quite flat and much smaller than his hand.
Old Broadbrim looked at it, but did not open it.
Placing it in his pocket he shook hands with Foster Kipp and Nora and turned away.
Many a month was to pass ere they looked upon his face again.
Many a dark danger was to be met and surmounted, many a wild scene passed through before he could look upon the sunlight of success, and the path he had selected to tread within the last few hours was a path of death.