deserted, the piano was silent, and the lights were on
in the upper rooms of the house. At the mounting of the steps, the
Forestry man met him and drew him aside into the library, which was as
empty as the portico.

"I heard the car and thought it would be Mr. Bromley," Bigelow
explained; adding: "I'm glad he didn't come. There has been an
accident."

"To--to Wingfield?"

"Yes. How did you know? It was just after dinner. The colonel had some
experimental mixture cooking in his electric furnace, and he invited us
all down to the laboratory to see the result. Wingfield tangled himself
in the wires in some unaccountable way and got a terrible shock. For a
few minutes we all thought he was killed, but the colonel would not give
up, and now he is slowly recovering."

Ballard sat down in the nearest chair and held his head in his hands.
His mind was in the condition of a coffer-dam that has been laboriously
pumped out, only to be overwhelmed by a sudden and irresistible return
of the flood. The theory of premeditated assassination was no nightmare;
it was a pitiless, brutal, inhuman fact. Wingfield, an invited guest,
and with a guest's privileges and immunities, had been tried, convicted,
and sentenced for knowing too much.

"It's pretty bad, isn't it?" he said to Bigelow, feeling the necessity
of saying something, and realising at the same instant the futility of
putting the horror of it into words for one who knew nothing of the true
state of affairs.

"Bad enough, certainly. You can imagine how it harrowed all of us, and
especially the women. Cousin Janet fainted and had to be carried up to
the house; and Miss Elsa was the only one of the young women who wasn't
perfectly helpless. Colonel Craigmiles was our stand-by; he knew just
what to do, and how to do it. He is a wonderful man, Mr. Ballard."

"He is--in more ways than a casual observer would suspect." Ballard
suffered so much of his thought to set itself in words. To minimise the
temptation to say more he turned his back upon the accident and
accounted for himself and his presence at Castle 'Cadia.

"Bromley was pretty well tired out when Otto came down with the car, and
I offered to ride around and make his excuses. We broke an engine bolt
on the road: otherwise I should have been here two hours earlier. You
say Wingfield is recovering? I wonder if I could see him for a few
minutes, before I go back to camp?"

Bigelow offered to go up-stairs and find out; a