h easier it
would be to drop upon it from the little balcony overhead than to
traverse the roof itself and reach the ground beneath without slipping.
But as they looked longer, each face betrayed doubt. The descent from the
balcony was easy enough, but how about the passage from Georgian's window
to the balcony? This latter was confined to the one window, and was
surrounded by an ornamental balustrade, high enough to offer a decided
obstacle to the adventurous person endeavoring to leap upon it from the
adjoining window-ledge. However, this leap, made in the dark and under
circumstances inducing the utmost recklessness, might look practical
enough from the window-ledge itself, and Mr. Harper, making a remark to
this effect, proposed that they should examine the ground rather than the
house for evidences of Mrs. Ransom's slip and fall as related by Anitra.

The only spot where they could hope to find such was in the one short
stretch--the width of the ell--underlying the edge of the sloping roof.
But this spot was all flagged, as I have already said, and when their
eyes strayed beyond it to the untilled fields, stretching between them
and the great rock at the verge of the waterfall from which she was
supposed to have taken her fatal leap, it was to find them as
unproductive of evidence as the brick walk itself. Not one pair of feet
but many had passed that way since early morning. The ground showed a
mass of impressions of all sizes and shapes, amid which it would have
been impossible for them, without the necessary experience, to have
followed up the flight of any one person. They had come to their task
too late.

"Futile," decided the lawyer. "There is no use in our going that way."
And he turned to look again at the ground in their immediate vicinity. As
he did so, his eye lighted on the triangular spot where the ell met the
side of the house under the kitchen windows. Here there was no flagging,
the walk taking a diagonal course from the corner of the ell to the
kitchen door.

"What are those?" he asked, pointing to two oblong impressions brimming
with water which disfigured the center of this small plot.

"They look like footprints," ventured Ransom.

"They are footprints," decided Mr. Harper as they stooped to examine the
marks, "and the footprints of a person dropping from a height. Nothing
else explains their depth or general appearance."

"Couldn't they be those of a person approaching the ell to converse