o stand
there trembling behind the closed door, her face as white as that other
face she had looked upon earlier in the day.

"He didn't do it!" she whispered. "He didn't. I know he didn't."

But the thing which she carried in her bosom seemed to be demanding
rudely: "Must you shut your eyes to believe with your heart?" And if
other eyes than her own saw it?

There was her closet, the open door showing the party dresses she had
brought back from school. She shook her head. Her room was so plainly
furnished with just a little dressing table, her bed, a chair, a stand
with some wild flowers on it, a smaller table with half a dozen books
scattered about. Then her eyes rested on the big trunk which had not
yet been carried down into the basement.

Running to it she flung up the lid and jerked out the tray. The bottom
was half filled with odds and ends, stockings, slippers, linen. She
took the revolver from her bosom, dropped it to the bottom of the
trunk, covered it hastily with loose clothing, replaced the tray and
closed the lid. But she could not feel that her secret was safe until
she had found the key on her dressing table. The lock was troublesome,
it was always troublesome. She was down on her knees, had just heard
the little click which told her that the lock was fast, and was trying
to work the key out again when the door opened softly and her mother
came in.

For a moment the two women, motionless, looked at each other fixedly.
Then Wanda rose slowly to her feet, a little red flush colouring her
brow, a fear which she knew absurd and yet which she could not crush
down, rising into her fluttering breast. Then Mrs. Leland closed the
door behind her, and stood with her back to it.

"Will you tell me about it, Wanda, dear?"

Her voice was troubled; her frank eyes, so like her daughter's, were at
once sad and anxious.

"It is too horrible, mamma." Wanda closed her eyes tightly for a
moment, trying to shut out the picture which burned so in her brain.
Every little detail stood out in her memory clear cut and vivid, the
grass trampled into a rude circle, the hand that clung in death to what
it had last grasped in life, the grotesquely crumpled, huddled body.

"Tell me about it, Wanda." Her mother was looking into the frankly
distressed face, curiously. Wanda had again the uneasy idea that her
mother was wondering about the trunk which she had just locked, and
again a quick fear leaped up within