ght on the stump where Mrs.
Zabriskie had placed it.

Whence came the clock, then, which had struck before the time and been
shattered for its pains? One quick look told us. On the ground, ten
paces at the right, lay Helen Zabriskie, a broken clock at her side, and
in her breast a bullet which was fast sapping the life from her sweet
eyes.

* * * * *

We had to tell him, there was such pleading in her looks; and never
shall I forget the scream that rang from his lips as he realized the
truth. Breaking from our midst, he rushed forward, and fell at her feet
as if guided by some supernatural instinct.

"Helen," he shrieked, "what is this? Were not my hands dyed deep enough
in blood that you should make me answerable for your life also?"

Her eyes were closed, but she opened them. Looking long and steadily at
his agonized face, she faltered forth:

"It is not you who have killed me; it is your crime. Had you been
innocent of Mr. Hasbrouck's death, your bullet would never have found
my heart. Did you think I could survive the proof that you had killed
that good man?"

"I--I did it unwittingly. I----"

"Hush!" she commanded, with an awful look, which, happily, he could not
see. "I had another motive. I wished to prove to you, even at the cost
of my life, that I loved you, had always loved you, and not----"

It was now his turn to silence her. His hand crept over her lips, and
his despairing face turned itself blindly towards us.

"Go," he cried; "leave us! Let me take a last farewell of my dying wife,
without listeners or spectators."

Consulting the eye of the physician who stood beside me, and seeing no
hope in it, I fell slowly back. The others followed, and the Doctor was
left alone with his wife. From the distant position we took, we saw her
arms creep round his neck, saw her head fall confidingly on his breast,
then silence settled upon them and upon all nature, the gathering
twilight deepening, till the last glow disappeared from the heavens
above and from the circle of leafless trees which enclosed this tragedy
from the outside world.

But at last there came a stir, and Dr. Zabriskie, rising up before us,
with the dead body of his wife held closely to his breast, confronted us
with a countenance so rapturous that he looked like a man transfigured.

"I will carry her to the boat," said he. "Not another hand shall touch
her. She was my true wife, my true wife!" And he towe