out
the--all the matters that must be attended to--upstairs."

"Upstairs?" she repeated, "what matters?" He blessed her indifference
then, and explained as gently as he could the necessity for some
disposition of her old housekeeper's body.

"Oh! Hester," she returned, "you cannot do anything to Hester, Roger
Bradley, for she has gone."

"Gone," he echoed stupidly.

"Go and see," said Margarita, pointing to the stairway, and he took
the steps two at a time. The room that she indicated faced the stairs
directly. It was furnished plainly with an ugly wooden bed covered
with a bright patchwork quilt, a pine bureau and two cheap chairs. The
walls were utterly bare and the floor, but for a woven rug near the
bed, of the sort so common in New England. And yet there was an air of
homely occupation in the plain chamber, a bright, patched cushion in
one chair, a basket full of household mending and such matters, on a
small table, a pair of spectacles and a worn Bible beside it. The room
had that unmistakable air of recent occupation, that subtle atmosphere
of use and wont that no art can simulate--and yet it was empty.

Roger came down the stairs again and summoned Caliban. The fellow lay
in a deep sleep, just as he had thrown himself, on the straw beside
the cow stall, a full pail of milk beside him. It was hard to wake
him, for he scowled and snored and dropped heavily off again after
each shaking, but at last he stood conscious before them and appeared
to understand Roger's sharp questions well enough, though his only
answer was a clumsy twist of his large head and a dismal negative sort
of grunt.

Where was Hester's body? Was she really dead? Had anyone been in the
house? What had he been doing all the afternoon? One might as well
have asked the great hound in the doorway. Even to threats of violence
he was dumb, cowering, it is true, but hopelessly and with no attempt
to escape whatever penalty his obstinacy might incur.

Roger fell into a perplexed silence and the lout dropped back snoring
on his straw.

"I do not see why we came back from Broadway," Margarita observed
placidly. "I did not want to, you remember, and now Caliban is too
sleepy to get our supper. We shall have to have more bread and milk.
Let us eat it on the rocks, Roger Bradley, will you?"

And Roger, in spite of the fact that he was forty and a conspicuously
practical person (or was it, perhaps just _because_ of this fact? I
confess I am not qu