failed utterly.

As the clock ticked off the quarter hour, and then the half, I grew not
only impatient but seriously alarmed, and flinging down the book I had
taken up as a last resort, stepped from the room, in the hope of coming
across some one in the hall whom I could interrogate.

But the house seemed strangely quiet, and when I had walked the full
length of the hall without encountering either maid or mistress, I
summoned up courage to return to the room I had left and ring the bell.

No answer, though I waited long for it.

Thinking that I had not pressed the button hard enough, I made a second
attempt, but again there was no answer.

Was anything amiss? Had she--

My thought did not complete itself. In sudden apprehension of I knew not
what, I dashed from the room and made my way down stairs without further
ceremony.

The unnatural stillness which had attracted my attention above was
repeated on the floor below. No one in the rooms, no one in the
passages.

Disturbed as I had not been yet by anything which had occurred in
connection with this harrowing affair, I leaped to the nearest door and
stepped out on the lawn.

My first glance was toward the river. All was as usual there. With my
worst fears dispelled, but still a prey to doubts for which as yet I had
no name, I moved toward the kitchen windows, expecting of course to find
some one there who would explain the situation to me. But not a head
appeared at my call. The kitchen, too, was deserted.

"This is not chance," I involuntarily exclaimed, and was turning toward
the stables when I perceived a child, the son of one of the gardeners,
crossing the lawn at a run, and hailing him, asked where everybody had
gone that the house seemed deserted.

He looked back but kept on running, shouting as he did so:

"I guess they're all down at the bungalow! I'm going there. Men are
digging up the cellar. Mrs. Ocumpaugh says she's afraid Miss Gwendolen's
body is buried there."

Aghast and perhaps a trifle conscience-stricken, I stood stock-still in
the sunshine. So this was what I had done! Driven her to frenzy; roused
her imagination to such a point that she saw her darling--always her
darling even if another woman's child--lying under the clay across which
I had attempted simply to prove that she had been carried. Or--no! I
would not think that! A detective of my experience outwitted by this
stricken, half-dead woman whom I had trembled to see try to sta