"_Mon Dieu!_" he cried hoarsely, staggering back into the shack. "You
have found me! But I swear to you I did not kill him. _Mon Dieu_, I
could not kill my brother!"

CHAPTER XXI

A STARTLING TALE

Hardly able to believe that they were actually living this weird thing,
the girls crowded into the shack after the stricken man and found that
he had sunk upon a bench and covered his face with his hands.

Strangely enough, though it had been Mollie who had precipitated this
thing, it was Betty who now took the lead. Softly she went over to the
shrinking man and put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"You say you did not kill your brother?" she questioned in so calm a
voice that the girls marveled at her. "You are sure you did not?"

"No! no!" cried the man again raising his haggard face, deep-lined with
the marks of suffering, "No--I am not sure. Can you not see? It is that
that is killing me. Yet in my sane moments I know that he was dead. He
lay there, so white, so still, with only that red, red stream of blood
to mar his whiteness. I leaned down, I listened to his heart----" The
man had evidently forgotten the presence of the girls, engulfed as he
was in the horror of the incident he related. Once more he was living
the tragedy, and the girls, tense, strained, horrified, lived it with
him.

"I listened to his heart," the man repeated, his arms stretched out
before him, his long, delicate hands gripped with a fierceness that made
the knuckles go white. "There was no beating. I put my face close to his
mouth to see if there was breath. But he had stopped breathing--forever!

"My heart went cold. I seized him by the shoulders. I called him by his
name--that brother that I had loved! Oh, how I had loved him. I begged
him to come back to me, to open those gray lips that a moment before had
been beautiful with life--to speak to me--and all the time----" his hand
relaxed and pointed to the floor and the girls followed the movement
fascinated--"there kept spreading and spreading on the rug a deep red
stain--my brother's blood! _Mon Dieu!_ And when I staggered to my feet I
found that the horrible stuff had clung to my fingers--they were dark
and sticky--the fingers of a murderer! I went mad then, I think. I
rushed from the house, from the place. One thing only was in my mind. To
get away--to get away from Paris, that accursed city----" He paused,
staring at the floor, and the girls waited, hardly daring to move for
f