m of my later years,
"what caused you to give such an unearthly scream just before this
murder was made known to the neighborhood?"

She stared, paled, and finally began to tremble, not, as I now believe,
at the insinuation latent in my words, but at the doubts which my
question aroused in her own breast.

"Did I?" she asked; then with a great burst of candor, which seemed
inseparable from her nature, she continued: "Why do I try to mislead you
or deceive myself? I did give a shriek just before the alarm was raised
next door; but it was not from any knowledge I had of a crime having
been committed, but because I unexpectedly saw before me my husband whom
I supposed to be on his way to Poughkeepsie. He was looking very pale
and strange, and for a moment I thought I was beholding his ghost. But
he soon explained his appearance by saying that he had fallen from the
train and had been only saved by a miracle from being dismembered; and
I was just bemoaning his mishap and trying to calm him and myself, when
that terrible shout was heard next door of 'Murder! murder!' Coming so
soon after the shock he had himself experienced, it quite unnerved him,
and I think we can date his mental disturbance from that moment. For he
began almost immediately to take a morbid interest in the affair next
door, though it was weeks, if not months, before he let a word fall of
the nature of those you have just heard. Indeed it was not till I
repeated to him some of the expressions he was continually letting fall
in his sleep, that he commenced to accuse himself of crime and talk of
retribution."

"You say that your husband frightened you on that night by appearing
suddenly at the door when you thought him on his way to Poughkeepsie. Is
Dr. Zabriskie in the habit of thus going and coming alone at an hour so
late as this must have been?"

"You forget that to the blind, night is less full of perils than the
day. Often and often has my husband found his way to his patients'
houses alone after midnight; but on this especial evening he had Harry
with him. Harry was his driver, and always accompanied him when he went
any distance."

"Well, then," said I, "all we have to do is to summon Harry and hear
what he has to say concerning this affair. He surely will know whether
or not his master went into the house next door."

"Harry has left us," she said. "Dr. Zabriskie has another driver now.
Besides--(I have nothing to conceal from you)--Harry was