ad desperately and successfully
barricaded itself against the approach of morning; yet if one were
standing in the room that leads from the bed-chamber on the
ground-floor--the room with the latticed window--one would see a ray
of light thrust through a chink of the shutters, and pointing like a
human finger at an object which lies by the hearth.

This finger, gleaming, motionless, and awful in its precision,
points to the body of old Mr. Lemuel Shackford, who lies there dead
in his night-dress, with a gash across his forehead.

In the darkness of that summer night a deed darker than the night
itself had been done in Stillwater.

II

That morning, when Michael Hennessey's girl Mary--a girl sixteen
years old--carried the can of milk to the rear door of the silent
house, she was nearly a quarter of hour later than usual, and looked
forward to being soundly rated.

"He's up and been waiting for it," she said to herself, observing
the scullery door ajar. "Won't I ketch it! It's him for growling and
snapping at a body, and it's me for always being before or behind
time, bad luck to me. There's no plazing him."

Mary pushed back the door and passed through the kitchen, serving
herself all the while to meet the objurgations which she supposed
were lying in wait for her. The sunshine was blinding without, but
sifted through the green jalousies, it made a gray, crepuscular light
within. As the girl approached the table, on which a plate with knife
and fork had been laid for breakfast, she noticed, somewhat
indistinctly at first, a thin red line running obliquely across the
floor from the direction of the sitting-room and ending near the
stove, where it had formed a small pool. Mary stopped short, scarcely
conscious why, and peered instinctively into the adjoining apartment.
Then, with a smothered cry, she let fall the milk-can, and a dozen
white rivulets, in strange contrast to that one dark red line which
first startled her, went meandering over the kitchen floor. With her
eyes riveted upon some object in the next room, the girl retreated
backward slowly and heavily dragging one foot after the other, until
she reached the gallery door; then she turned swiftly, and plunged
into the street.

Twenty minutes later, every man, woman, and child in Stillwater
knew that old Mr. Shackford had been murdered.

Mary Hennessey had to tell her story a hundred times during the
morning, for each minute brought to Michael's t