ect
confidence in Mrs. Ocumpaugh, took advantage of the permission she had
received, and slipped outside to sit on the bench and listen to the
music. Presently Mrs. Ocumpaugh appeared, saying that she had left her
guests for a moment just to take a look at Gwendolen and see if all were
well with her.

As she needed no attendance, Miss Graham might stay where she was. And
Miss Graham did, taking great pleasure in the music, which was the
finest she had ever heard. Meanwhile Mrs. Ocumpaugh entered the
bungalow, and, untying the child's shoes as she had frequently done
before when she found her asleep, she lifted her and carried her just as
she was down the trap, the door of which she had previously raised. The
darkness lurking in such places, a darkness which had rendered it so
impenetrable at midnight, was relieved to some extent in daylight by
means of little grated openings in the wall under the beams, so that her
chief difficulty lay in holding up her long dress and sustaining the
heavy child at the same time. But the exigency of the moment and her
apprehension lest Miss Graham should reenter the bungalow before she
could finish her task and escape, gave great precision to her movements,
and in an incredibly short space of time she had reached those musty
precincts which, if they should not prove the death of the child, would
safely shelter her from every one's eye, till the first excitement of
her loss was over, and the conviction of her death by drowning became a
settled fact in every mind.

Mrs. Ocumpaugh's return was a flight. She had brought one of the little
shoes with her, concealed in a pocket she had made especially for it in
the trimmings of her elaborate gown. She found the bungalow empty, the
trap still raised, and Miss Graham, toward whom she cast a hurried look
through the window, yet in her place, listening with enthralled
attention to the great tenor upon whose magnificent singing Mrs.
Ocumpaugh had relied for the successful carrying out of what she and
Mrs. Carew considered the most critical part of the plot. So far then,
all was well. She had but to drop the trap-door carefully to its place,
replace the corner of the carpet she had pulled up, push down with her
foot the two or three nails she had previously loosened, and she would
be quite at liberty to quit the place and return to her guests.

But she found that this was not as easy as she had imagined. The clogs
of a terrible, almost a criminal,