rceness in his face--a look which
means no good to anybody--and as his hand goes to his overcoat pocket,
drawing out something which I cannot describe, but which he handles as
if it were a pistol, I feel a horrible fear, and--and--" The child was
staggering, and the hand which was free had sought her heart where it
lay clenched, the knuckles showing white in the dim light.

Mr. Challoner watched her with dilated eyes, the spell under which she
spoke falling in some degree upon him. Had she finished? Was this all?
No; she is speaking again, but very low, almost in a whisper.

"There is music--a crash--but I plainly see his other hand approach the
object he is holding. He takes something from the end--the object is
pointed my way--I am looking into--into--what? I do not know. I cannot
even see him now. The space where he stood is empty. Everything fades,
and I wake with a loud cry in my ears and a sense of death here." She
had lifted her hand and struck at her heart, opening her eyes as she did
so. "Yet it was not I who had been shot," she added softly.

Mr. Challoner shuddered. This was like the reopening of his daughter's
grave. But he had entered upon the scene with a full appreciation of the
ordeal awaiting him and he did not lose his calmness, or the control of
his judgment.

"Be seated, Miss Scott," he entreated, taking a chair himself. "You have
described the spot and some of the circumstances of my daughter's death
as accurately as if you had been there. But you have doubtless read
a full account of those details in the papers; possibly seen pictures
which would make the place quite real to you. The mind is a strange
storehouse. We do not always know what lies hidden within it."

"That's true," she admitted. "But the man! I had never seen the man, or
any picture of him, and his face was clearest of all. I should know it
if I saw it anywhere. It is imprinted on my memory as plainly as yours.
Oh, I hope never to see that man!"

Mr. Challoner sighed; he had really anticipated something from the
interview. The disappointment was keen. A moment of expectation; the
thrill which comes to us all under the shadow of the supernatural, and
then--this! a young and imaginative girl's dream, convincing to herself
but supplying nothing which had not already been supplied both by the
facts and his own imagination! A man had stood at the staircase, and
this man had raised his arm. She said that she had seen something like a