al is a wonder. I must have been
near it more than once.

"I have been asked, and Miss Butterworth has been asked, how in the
light of what we now know concerning this poor victim's presence there,
we account for her being in the darkness and showing so little terror at
our entrance and Mr. Stone's approach. _I_ account for it in this way:
Two half-burned matches were found in the parlor grate. One I flung
there; the other had probably been used by her to light the dining-room
gas. If this was still lighted when we drove up, as it may have been,
then, alarmed by the sound of the stopping coach, she had put it out,
with a vague idea of hiding herself till she knew whether it was the old
gentleman who was coming or only her suspicious and unreasonable
husband. If it was not lighted then, she was probably aroused from a
sleep on the parlor sofa, and was for the moment too dazed to cry out or
resent an embrace she had not time to understand before she succumbed to
the cruel stab that killed her. Miss Butterworth, however, thinks that
the poor creature took the intruder for Franklin till she heard my
voice, when she probably became so amazed that she was in a measure
paralyzed and found it impossible to move or cry out. As Miss
Butterworth is a woman of great discretion I should think her
explanation the truest, if I did not consider her a little prejudiced
against Mrs. Van Burnam.

"But to return to myself.

"With the first glimmer of light that came through the closed shutters I
rose and began my dreadful task. Upheld by a purpose as relentless as
that which drove the author of this horror into murder, I stripped the
body and put upon it my own clothing, with the one exception of the
shoes. Then, when I had re-dressed myself in hers, I steadied up my
heart and with one wild pull dragged down the cabinet upon her so that
her face might lose its traits and her identification become impossible.

"How I had strength to do this, and how I could contemplate the result
without shrieking, I cannot now imagine. Perhaps I was hardly human at
this crisis; perhaps something of the demon which had informed him in
his awful work had entered into my breast, making this thing possible. I
only know that I did what I have said and did it calmly. More than that,
that I had mind and judgment left to give to my own appearance.
Observing that the dress I had put on was of a conspicuous plaid, I
exchanged the skirt portion with the brown sil