bserve."

"Did you turn the key upon closing the drawer?"

"I did."

"Take it out?"

"No, sir."

"Miss Leavenworth, that pistol, as you have perhaps observed, lies on
the table before you. Will you look at it?" And lifting it up into view,
he held it towards her.

If he had meant to startle her by the sudden action, he amply succeeded.
At the first sight of the murderous weapon she shrank back, and a
horrified, but quickly suppressed shriek, burst from her lips. "Oh, no,
no!" she moaned, flinging out her hands before her.

"I must insist upon your looking at it, Miss Leavenworth," pursued the
coroner. "When it was found just now, all the chambers were loaded."

Instantly the agonized look left her countenance. "Oh, then--" She did
not finish, but put out her hand for the weapon.

But the coroner, looking at her steadily, continued: "It has been lately
fired off, for all that. The hand that cleaned the barrel forgot the
cartridge-chamber, Miss Leavenworth."

She did not shriek again, but a hopeless, helpless look slowly settled
over her face, and she seemed about to sink; but like a flash the
reaction came, and lifting her head with a steady, grand action I have
never seen equalled, she exclaimed, "Very well, what then?"

The coroner laid the pistol down; men and women glanced at each other;
every one seemed to hesitate to proceed. I heard a tremulous sigh at my
side, and, turning, beheld Mary Leavenworth staring at her cousin with
a startled flush on her cheek, as if she began to recognize that the
public, as well as herself, detected something in this woman, calling
for explanation.

At last the coroner summoned up courage to continue.

"You ask me, Miss Leavenworth, upon the evidence given, what then? Your
question obliges me to say that no burglar, no hired assassin, would
have used this pistol for a murderous purpose, and then taken the pains,
not only to clean it, but to reload it, and lock it up again in the
drawer from which he had taken it."

She did not reply to this; but I saw Mr. Gryce make a note of it with
that peculiar emphatic nod of his.

"Nor," he went on, even more gravely, "would it be possible for any one
who was not accustomed to pass in and out of Mr. Leavenworth's room at
all hours, to enter his door so late at night, procure this pistol from
its place of concealment, traverse his apartment, and advance as closely
upon him as the facts show to have been necessary, without causin