a bitterness I could not conceal, "Miss Emily is not
young, and I think she is ready to go. But she has been killed by her
friends. I wanted to help, but they would not allow me to."

Toward morning there was nothing more to be done, and we sat together,
listening to the stertorous breathing from the bed. Maggie, who had
been up all night, had given me notice at three in the morning, and was
upstairs packing her trunk.

I went into my room, and brought back Miss Emily's confession.

"Isn't it time," I said, "to tell me about this? I ought to know, I
think, before she goes. If it is not true, you owe it to her, I think."
But she shook her head.

I looked at the confession, and from it to Miss Emily's pinched old
face.

"To whom it may concern: On the 30th day of May, 1911, I killed a woman
here in this house. I hope you will not find this until I am dead.

"(Signed) EMILY BENTON."

Anne was watching me. I went to the mantel and got a match, and then,
standing near the bed, I lighted it and touched it to the paper. It
burned slowly, a thin blue semicircle of fire that ate its way slowly
across until there was but the corner I held. I dropped it into the
fireplace and watched it turn to black ash.

I may have fancied it--I am always fancying things about Miss Emily--but
I will always think that she knew. She drew a longer, quieter breath,
and her eyes, fixed and staring, closed. I think she died in the first
sleep she had had in twenty-four hours.

I had expected Anne Bullard to show emotion, for no one could doubt her
attachment to Miss Emily. But she only stood stoically by the bed for
a moment and then, turning swiftly, went to the wall opposite and
took down from the wall the walnut-framed photograph Mrs. Graves had
commented on.

Anne Bullard stood with the picture in her hand, looking at it. And
suddenly she broke into sobs. It was stormy weeping, and I got the
impression that she wept, not for Miss Emily, but for many other
things--as though the piled-up grief of years had broken out at last.

She took the photograph away, and I never saw it again.

Miss Emily was buried from her home. I obliterated myself, and her
friends, who were, I felt, her murderers, came in and took charge. They
paid me the tribute of much politeness, but no cordiality, and I think
they felt toward me as I felt toward them. They blamed me with the whole
affair.

She left her property all to Anne Bullard, to the astonished rage