o Mrs. Hammond's
ears (why is there always some one to carry these reports?) she
roused from the torpor into which she had fallen, and in wild fashion
exclaimed:

"I knew it! I expected it! He was shot through the window and by that
wretch. He never shot himself." Violent declarations which trailed off
into the one continuous wail, "O, my baby! my poor baby!"

Such words, even though the fruit of delirium, merited some sort of
attention, or so this good coroner thought, and as soon as opportunity
offered and she was sufficiently sane and quiet to respond to his
questions, he asked her whom she had meant by that wretch, and what
reason she had, or thought she had, of attributing her husband's death
to any other agency than his own disgust with life.

And then it was that his sympathies, although greatly roused in her
favour began to wane. She met the question with a cold stare followed by
a few ambiguous words out of which he could make nothing. Had she said
wretch? She did not remember. They must not be influenced by anything
she might have uttered in her first grief. She was well-nigh insane at
the time. But of one thing they might be sure: her husband had not shot
himself; he was too much afraid of death for such an act. Besides, he
was too happy. Whatever folks might say he was too fond of his family to
wish to leave it.

Nor did the coroner or any other official succeed in eliciting anything
further from her. Even when she was asked, with cruel insistence,
how she explained the fact that the baby was found lying on the floor
instead of in its crib, her only answer was: "His father was trying to
soothe it. The child was crying dreadfully, as you have heard from those
who were kept awake by him that night, and my husband was carrying him
about when the shot came which caused George to fall and overlay the
baby in his struggles."

"Carrying a baby about with a loaded pistol in his hand?" came back in
stern retort.

She had no answer for this. She admitted when informed that the bullet
extracted from her husband's body had been found to correspond exactly
with those remaining in the five chambers of the pistol taken from his
hand, that he was not only the owner of this pistol but was in the habit
of sleeping with it under his pillow; but, beyond that, nothing; and
this reticence, as well as her manner which was cold and repellent, told
against her.

A verdict of suicide was rendered by the coroner's jury, and t