looked across the street, and blue smoke was drifting
out of the slatted door over the man who lay still. Then there seemed
to come over me at once the meaning of the horrible thing that had
happened, and I ran.

I heard a shutter flung open in the street behind me. I saw a glitter
near the curb, a flash of steel, a shine of mother-of-pearl, and that
was the pistol he had flung away. I felt suffocating, and my feet
seemed weighted with lead as if I were running in a dream. And,
strange enough, what filled me with the wildest terror was not the
sight of the thing that lay still on the pavement under the drifting
smoke, but the sound of those furiously running feet, dying away and
away into the sleepy city. I felt as if I myself were a criminal
pursued, as if the house was the one refuge that would save me, and
with a thousand horrors at my heels I burst in upon father just sitting
down with Mr. Dingley, in the quiet, sunny dining-room.

At sight of me both jumped up.

"What's the matter, child?" father said.

[Illustration: "What's the matter, child?" father said.]

I looked around, and realized I was still clutching my basket, though
all the mushrooms had fallen out, and my foot was through a torn
flounce, and my hat hanging on my neck. My mouth was dry. For a
moment I couldn't get a word off my tongue; and then, "He fell, he
fell!" I said, and, "He is gone!"

"Where was it?" The words seemed to be in Mr. Dingley's voice, yet
came as if from, far off.

"Mr. Rood's gambling-house!" I gasped, and felt the top of my head
getting cold and the floor beginning to move under me. I had a dim
impression of Mr. Dingley rushing out of the room with his napkin still
in his hand; then I found myself sitting on the sofa, with a stinging
taste of brandy on my tongue, and heard father's voice saying, "Can't
you tell me, child?"

"Oh," I said, "he's dead!" And then I poured all the story out in a
breath. I saw father's face growing more and more keen and grave and I
could feel his fingers gently around my arm as if he feared my turning
faint again. Indeed the room around me seemed unreal, but what had
happened in the street was still fearfully clear. It was cut into my
mind as if it were still before my eyes, the toppling lurch of the
falling body, the silk hat rolling into the gutter, and then that fine
terrible gentleman that had sprung out after. The moment had stamped
him as clear in my memory as years could