ed this when
once in, but would not go back. All I have told about using matches
to light me to the southwest chamber is true, also my coming upon
the old candelabrum there, with a candle in one of its sockets. This
candle I lit, my sole reason for seeking this room being my desire
to examine the antique sketch for the words which she had said could
be found there.

"I had failed to bring a magnifying-glass with me, but my eyes are
phenomenally sharp. Knowing where to look, I was able to pick out
enough words here and there in the lines composing the hair, to feel
quite sure that my wife had neither deceived me nor been deceived
as to certain directions being embodied there in writing. Shaken in
my last lingering hope, but not yet quite convinced that these words
pointed to outrageous crime, I flew next to the closet and drew out
the fatal drawer.

"You have been there and know what the place is, but no one but
myself can ever realize what it was for me, still loving, still
clinging to a wild inconsequent belief in my wife, to grope in that
mouth of hell for the spring she had chattered about in her sleep,
to find it, press it, and then to hear, down in the dark of the
fearsome recess, the sound of something deadly strike against what
I took to be the cushions of the old settle standing at the edge
of the library hearthstone.

"I think I must have fainted. For when I found myself possessed
of sufficient consciousness to withdraw from that hole of death,
the candle in the candelabrum was shorter by an inch than when I
first thrust my head into the gap made by the removed drawers.
In putting back the drawers I hit the candelabrum with my foot,
upsetting it and throwing out the burning candle. As the flames
began to lick the worm-eaten boarding of the floor a momentary
impulse seized me to rush away and leave the whole place to burn.
But I did not. With a sudden frenzy, I stamped out the flame,
and then finding myself in darkness, griped my way downstairs and
out. If I entered the library I do not remember it. Some lapses
must be pardoned a man involved as I was."

"But the fact which you dismiss so lightly is an important one,"
insisted the major. "We must know positively whether you entered
this room or not."

"I have no recollection of doing so"

"Then you can not tell us whether the little table was standing
there, with the candelabrum upon it or--"

"I can tell you nothing about it."

The major,