down the stairs. As I reached the hall,
someone ran past me in the darkness. There was a blinding flash close
to my face and a deafening explosion; and when I recovered my sight, the
form of a man appeared for an instant dimly silhouetted in the opening
of the street door. The door closed with a bang, leaving the house
wrapped in silence and gloom.

"My first impulse was to pursue the man, but it immediately gave way to
alarm for my wife. I groped my way into the dining-room and was creeping
towards the place where the matches were kept when my bare foot touched
something soft and bulky. I stooped to examine it and my outspread hand
came in contact with a face.

"I sprang up with a gasp of terror and searched frantically for the
matches. In a few moments I had found them and tremblingly struck a
light; and the first glimmer of the flame turned my deadly fear into yet
more deadly realization. My wife lay on the hearth-rug, her upturned
face as white as marble, her half-open eyes already glazing. A great,
brown scorch marked the breast of her night-dress and at its center was
a small stain of blood.

"She was stone dead. I saw that at a glance. The bullet must have passed
right through her heart and she must have died in an instant. That, too,
I saw. And though I called her by her name and whispered words of
tenderness into her ears; though I felt her pulseless wrists and chafed
her hands--so waxen now and chill--I knew that she was gone.

"I was still kneeling beside her, crazed, demented by grief and horror;
still stroking her poor white hand, telling her that she was my dear
one, my little Kate, and begging her, foolishly, to come back to me, to
be my little friend and playmate as of old; still, I say, babbling in
the insanity of grief, when I heard a soft step descending the stairs.
It came nearer. The door opened and someone stole into the room on
tip-toe. It was the housemaid, Harratt. She stood stock still when she
saw us and stared and uttered strange whimpering cries like a frightened
dog. And then, suddenly, she turned and stole away silently as she had
come, and I heard her running softly upstairs. Presently she came down
again, but this time she passed the dining-room and went out of the
street door. I vaguely supposed she had gone for assistance, but the
matter did not concern me. My wife was dead. Nothing mattered now.

"Harratt did not return, however, and I soon forgot her. The death of my
dear one g