s crib, what would he be apt to do in his present emergency?
Nothing at first, but as the screaming continued he would remember the
old tales of fathers walking the floor at night with crying babies,
and hasten to follow suit. Violet, in her anxiety to reach his inmost
thought, crossed to where the crib had stood, and, taking that as a
start, began pacing the room in search of the spot from which a bullet,
if shot, would glance aside from the mirror in the direction of the
window. (Not that she was ready to accept this theory of Mrs. Hammond,
but that she did not wish to entirely dismiss it without putting it to
the test.)

She found it in an unexpected quarter of the room and much nearer
the bed-head than where his body was found. This, which might seem to
confuse matters, served, on the contrary to remove from the case one of
its most serious difficulties. Standing here, he was within reach of the
pillow under which his pistol lay hidden, and if startled, as his wife
believed him to have been by a noise at the other end of the room, had
but to crouch and reach behind him in order to find himself armed and
ready for a possible intruder.

Imitating his action in this as in other things, she had herself
crouched low at the bedside and was on the point of withdrawing her hand
from under the pillow, when a new surprise checked her movement and held
her fixed in her position, with eyes staring straight at the adjoining
wall. She had seen there what he must have seen in making this same
turn--the dark bars of the opposite window-frame outlined in the
mirror--and understood at once what had happened. In the nervousness and
terror of the moment, George Hammond had mistaken this reflection of
the window for the window itself, and shot impulsively at the man he
undoubtedly saw covering him from the trellis without. But while this
explained the shattering of the mirror, how about the other and still
more vital question, of where the bullet went afterward? Was the angle
at which it had been fired acute enough to send it out of a window
diagonally opposed? No; even if the pistol had been held closer to the
man firing it than she had reason to believe, the angle still would be
oblique enough to carry it on to the further wall.

But no sign of any such impact had been discovered on this wall.
Consequently, the force of the bullet had been expended before reaching
it, and when it fell--

Here, her glance, slowly traveling along th