and fine as she was, had done the thing
she claimed to have done. It was her own writing, thin, faintly shaded,
as neat and as erect as herself. But even that I would not accept,
until I had compared it with such bits of hers as I possessed, the note
begging me to take the house, the inscription on the fly-leaf of "Fifty
Years in Bolivar County."

And here was something I could not quite understand. The writing was all
of the same order, but while the confession and the inscription in
the book were similar, letter for letter, in the note to me there were
differences, a change in the "t" in Benton, a fuller and blacker
stroke, a variation in the terminals of the letters--it is hard to
particularize.

I spent the remainder of the day in the library, going out for dinner,
of course, but returning to my refuge again immediately after. Only in
the library am I safe from Maggie. By virtue of her responsibility for
my wardrobe, she virtually shares my bedroom, but her respect for books
she never reads makes her regard a library as at least semi-holy ground.
She dusts books with more caution than china, and her respect for a
family Bible is greater than her respect for me.

I spent the evening there, Miss Emily's cat on the divan, and the
mysterious confession lying before me under the lamp. At night the
variation between it and her note to me concerning the house seemed more
pronounced. The note looked more like a clumsy imitation of Miss Emily's
own hand. Or--perhaps this is nearer--as if, after writing in a certain
way for sixty years, she had tried to change her style.

All my logic ended in one conclusion. She must have known the confession
was there. Therefore the chances were that she had placed it there. But
it was not so simple as that.

Both crime and confession indicated a degree of impulse that Miss Emily
did not possess. I have entirely failed with my picture of Miss Emily if
the word violence can be associated with her in any way. Miss Emily
was a temple, clean swept, cold, and empty. She never acted on impulse.
Every action, almost every word, seemed the result of thought and
deliberation.

Yet, if I could believe my eyes, five years before she had killed a
woman in this very house. Possibly in the very room in which I was then
sitting.

I find, on looking back, that the terror must have left me that day.
It had, for so many weeks, been so much a part of my daily life that
I would have missed it had it