lying pulseless in sudden death. I could not escape the one
without feeling the immediate impress of the other, and if by chance
they both yielded for an instant to that earlier scene of a desolate
Street, with its solitary lamp shining down on the crouched figure of
a man washing his shaking hands in a drift of freshly fallen snow, they
immediately rushed back with a force and clearness all the greater for
the momentary lapse.

I was still struggling with these fancies when the door opened, and
George came in. There was news in his face as I rushed to meet him.

"Tell me--tell," I begged.

He tried to smile at my eagerness, but the attempt was ghastly.

"I've been listening and looking," said he, "and this is all I have
learned. Miss Challoner died, not from a stroke or from disease of any
kind, but from a wound reaching the heart. No one saw the attack, or
even the approach or departure of the person inflicting this wound. If
she was killed by a pistol-shot, it was at a distance, and almost over
the heads of the persons sitting at the table we saw there. But the
doctors shake their heads at the word pistol-shot, though they refuse
to explain themselves or to express any opinion till the wound has been
probed. This they are going to do at once, and when that question is
decided, I may feel it my duty to speak and may ask you to support my
story."

"I will tell what I saw," said I.

"Very good. That is all that will be required. We are strangers to the
parties concerned, and only speak from a sense of justice. It may be
that our story will make no impression, and that we shall be dismissed
with but few thanks. But that is nothing to us. If the woman has been
murdered, he is the murderer. With such a conviction in my mind, there
can be no doubt as to my duty."

"We can never make them understand how he looked."

"No. I don't expect to."

"Or his manner as he fled."

"Nor that either."

"We can only describe what we saw him do."

"That's all."

"Oh, what an adventure for quiet people like us! George, I don't believe
he shot her."

"He must have."

"But they would have seen--have heard--the people around, I mean."

"So they say; but I have a theory--but no matter about that now. I'm
going down again to see how things have progressed. I'll be back for you
later. Only be ready."

Be ready! I almost laughed,--a hysterical laugh, of course, when I
recalled the injunction. Be ready! This lonely sitting by