capable of motion.
Then on her dazed senses there supervenes--so she swore--the
consciousness that some object is moving in the room--moving apparently
of its own accord--moving in direct opposition to all the laws of
nature as she knows them. She imagines that she perceives a phantasm--a
strange something--globular-white--looking, as she says, "like a
good-sized ball of cotton"--rise directly from the floor before her,
ascending slowly upward, as if driven aloft by some invisible force. A
sharp shock of the sense of the supernatural deprives her of ordered
reason. Throwing forward her arms, and uttering a shrill scream, she
rushes towards the door. But she never reaches it: midway she falls
prostrate over some object, and knows no more; and when, an hour later,
she is borne out of the room in the arms of Randolph himself, the blood
is dripping from a fracture of her right tibia.

'Meantime, in the upper chamber the pistol-shot and the scream of the
woman have been heard. All eyes turn to Randolph. He stands in the
shadow of the mechanical contrivance on which he has been illustrating
his points; leans for support on it. He essays to speak, the muscles of
his face work, but no sound comes. Only after a time is he able to
gasp: "Did you hear something--from below?" They answer "yes" in
chorus; then one of the lads takes a lighted candle, and together they
troop out, Randolph behind them. A terrified servant rushes up with the
news that something dreadful has happened in the house. They proceed
for some distance, but there is an open window on the stairs, and the
light is blown out. They have to wait some minutes till another is
obtained, and then the procession moves forward once more. Arrived at
Lord Pharanx's door, and finding it locked, a lantern is procured, and
Randolph leads them through the house and out on the lawn. But having
nearly reached the balcony, a lad observes a track of small
woman's-feet in the snow; a halt is called, and then Randolph points
out another track of feet, half obliterated by the snow, extending from
a coppice close by up to the balcony, and forming an angle with the
first track. These latter are great big feet, made by ponderous
labourers' boots. He holds the lantern over the flower-beds, and shows
how they have been trampled down. Some one finds a common scarf, such
as workmen wear; and a ring and a locket, dropped by the burglars in
their flight, are also found by Randolph half buried i