imprint of Maggie's coin and of her
attempts at salvage were at the edge and quite distinct from the others.

I lifted the jar and picked up the paper. It was folded and refolded
until it was not much larger than a thumb-nail, a rather stiff paper
crossed with faint blue lines. I am not sure that I would have opened
it--it had been so plainly in hiding, and was so obviously not my
affair--had not Maggie suddenly gasped and implored me not to look at
it. I immediately determined to examine it.

Yet, after I had read it twice, it had hardly made an impression on my
mind. There are some things so incredible that the brain automatically
rejects them. I looked at the paper. I read it with my eyes. But I did
not grasp it.

It was not note paper. It was apparently torn from a tablet of glazed
and ruled paper--just such paper, for instance, as Maggie soaks in
brandy and places on top of her jelly before tying it up. It had been
raggedly torn. The scrap was the full width of the sheet, but only three
inches or so deep. It was undated, and this is what it said:

"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."

Maggie had read the confession over my shoulder, and I felt her
body grow rigid. As for myself, my first sensation was one of acute
discomfort--that we should have exposed the confession to the light
of day. Neither of us, I am sure, had really grasped it. Maggie put a
trembling hand on my arm.

"The brass of her," she said, in a thin, terrified voice. "And sitting
in church like the rest of us. Oh, my God, Miss Agnes, put it back!"

I whirled on her, in a fury that was only an outlet for my own shock.

"Once for all, Maggie," I said, "I'll ask you to wait until you are
spoken to. And if I hear that you have so much as mentioned this--piece
of paper, out you go and never come back."

But she was beyond apprehension. She was literal, too. She saw, not Miss
Emily unbelievably associated with a crime, but the crime itself. "Who
d'you suppose it was, Miss Agnes?"

"I don't believe it at all. Some one has placed it there to hurt Miss
Emily."

"It's her writing," said Maggie doggedly.

After a time I got rid of her, and sat down to think in the library.
Rather I sat down to reason with myself.

For every atom of my brain was clamoring that this thing was true, that
my little Miss Emily, exquisite