-iron of all kinds.

"This is certainly not where my fair stroller turned her steps," thought
Don Luis. "Let's look somewhere else."

Nevertheless, he did not move. He had noticed a noise in the barn.

He listened and heard nothing. But as he wanted to get to the bottom of
things he forced out a couple of planks with his shoulder and stepped in.

The breach which he had thus contrived admitted a little light. He could
see enough to make his way between two casks, over some broken window
frames, to an empty space on the far side.

His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness as he went on. For all that, he
knocked his head against something which he had not perceived, something
hanging up above, something rather hard which, when set in motion, swung
to and fro with a curious grating sound.

It was too dark to see. Don Luis took an electric lantern from his pocket
and pressed the spring.

"Damn it all!" he swore, falling back aghast.

Above him hung a skeleton!

And the next moment he uttered another oath. A second skeleton hung
beside the first!

They were both fastened by stout ropes to rings fixed in the rafters of
the barn. Their heads dangled from the slip-knots. The one against which
Perenna had struck was still moving slightly and the bones clicked
together with a gruesome sound.

He dragged forward a rickety table, propped it up as best he could, and
climbed onto it to examine the two skeletons more closely. They were
turned toward each other, face to face. The first was considerably bigger
than the second. They were obviously the skeletons of a man and a woman.
Even when they were not moved by a jolt of any kind, the wind blowing
through the crevices in the barn set them lightly swinging to and fro, in
a sort of very slow, rhythmical dance.

But what perhaps was most impressive in this ghastly spectacle was the
fact that each of the skeletons, though deprived of every rag of
clothing, still wore a gold ring, too wide now that the flesh had
disappeared, but held, as in hooks, by the bent joints of the fingers.

He slipped off the rings with a shiver of disgust, and found that they
were wedding rings. Each bore a date inside, the same date, 12 August,
1887, and two names: "Alfred--Victorine."

"Husband and wife," he murmured. "Is it a double suicide? Or a murder?
But how is it possible that the two skeletons have not yet been
discovered? Can one conceive that they have been here since the death of
old