ime from air and sunshine.

The elegance of the heavily stuccoed ceiling, admitted to be one of
the finest specimens of its kind in Washington, as well as the
richness of the carvings ornamenting the mantel of Italian marble
rising above the accursed hearthstone, only served to make more
evident the extreme neglect into which the rest of the room had sunk.
Being anything but anxious to subject myself further to its unhappy
influence and quite convinced that the place was indeed as empty as
it looked, I turned to leave, when my eyes fell upon something so
unexpected and so extraordinary, seen as it was under the influence
of the old tragedies with which my mind was necessarily full, that
I paused, balked in my advance, and well-nigh uncertain whether I
looked upon a real thing or on some strange and terrible fantasy of
my aroused imagination.

A form lay before me, outstretched on that portion of the floor
which had hitherto been hidden from me by the half-open door--a
woman's form, which even in that first casual look impressed itself
upon me as one of aerial delicacy and extreme refinement; and this
form lay as only the dead lie; the dead! And I had been looking at
the hearthstone for just such a picture! No, not just such a
picture, for this woman lay face uppermost, and, on the floor beside
her was blood.

A hand had plucked my sleeve. It was Hibbard's. Startled by my
immobility and silence, he had stepped in with quaking members,
expecting he hardly knew what. But no sooner did his eyes fall on
the prostrate form which held me spellbound, than an unforeseen
change took place in him. What had unnerved me, restored him to
full self-possession. Death in this shape was familiar to him. He
had no fear of blood. He did not show surprise at encountering it,
but only at the effect it appeared to produce on me.

"Shot!" was his laconic comment as he bent over the prostrate body.
"Shot through the heart! She must have died before she fell."

Shot!

That was a new experience for this room. No wound had ever before
disfigured those who had fallen here, nor had any of the previous
victims been found lying on any other spot than the one over which
that huge settle kept guard. As these thoughts crossed my mind, I
instinctively glanced again toward the fireplace for what I almost
refused to believe lay outstretched at my feet. When nothing more
appeared there than that old seat of sinister memory, I experienced