unnatural. Was this the janitor's idea? I hardly thought so, and was
about to pluck one of these cushions off, when that most unreasonable
horror seized me again and I found myself looking back over my shoulder
at the fireplace from which rose a fading streak of smoke which some
passing gust, perhaps, had blown out into the room.

I felt sick. Was it the smell? It was not that of burning wood, hardly of
burning paper, I--but here my second match went out.

Thoroughly roused now (you will say, by what?) I felt my way out of the
room and to the head of the staircase. I remembered the candle and
candlestick I had heard thrown down on the lower floor by Carmel
Cumberland. I would secure them and come back and settle these uncanny
doubts. It might be the veriest fool business, but my mind was
disturbed and must be set at ease. Nothing else seemed so important,
yet I was not without anxiety for the lovely and delicate woman
wandering the snow-covered roads in the teeth of a furious gale, any
more than I was dead to the fact that I should never forgive myself if
I allowed the man to escape whom I believed to be hiding somewhere in
the rear of this house.

I had a hunt for the candlestick and a still longer one for the candle,
but finally I recovered both, and, lighting the latter, felt myself, for
the first time, more or less master of the situation.

Rapidly regaining the room in which my interest was now centred, I set
the candlestick down on the dresser, and approached the lounge. Hardly
knowing what I feared, or what I expected to find, I tore off one of the
cushions and flung it behind me. More cushions were revealed--but that
was not all.

Escaping from the edge of one of them I saw a shiny tress of woman's
hair. I gave a gasp and pulled off more cushions, then I fell on my
knees, struck down by the greatest horror which a man can feel. Death lay
before me--violent, uncalled-for death--and the victim was a woman. But
it was not that. Though the head was not yet revealed, I thought I knew
the woman and that she--Did seconds pass or many minutes before I lifted
that last cushion? I shall never know. It was an eternity to me and I am
not of a sentimental cast, but I have some sort of a conscience and
during that interval it awoke. It has never quite slept since.

The cushion had not concealed the hands, but I did not look at
them--I did not dare. I must first see the face. But I did not twitch
this pillow off; I dre