e of the girl appeared. The
eyes were widely dilated and the lower jaw dropped in an expression
of surprise and awe.

The girl's gaze was riveted upon the figure upon the floor, and
presently she crept stealthily into the room and tiptoed toward
the corpse. She appeared as though constantly poised for flight,
and when she had come to within two or three feet of the body she
stopped and, looking up at Smith-Oldwick, voiced some interrogation
which he could not, of course, understand. Then she came close to
the side of the dead man and kneeling upon the floor felt gingerly
of the body.

Presently she shook the corpse by the shoulder, and then with a
show of strength which her tenderly girlish form belied, she turned
the body over on its back. If she had been in doubt before, one
glance at the hideous features set in death must have convinced
her that life was extinct, and with the realization there broke
from her lips peal after peal of mad, maniacal laughter as with her
little hands she beat upon the upturned face and breast of the dead
man. It was a gruesome sight from which the Englishman involuntarily
drew back-a gruesome, disgusting sight such as, he realized, might
never be witnessed outside a madhouse or this frightful city.

In the midst of her frenzied rejoicing at the death of the man,
and Smith-Oldwick could attribute her actions to no other cause,
she suddenly desisted from her futile attacks upon the insensate
flesh and, leaping to her feet, ran quickly to the door, where
she shot a wooden bolt into its socket, thus securing them from
interference from without. Then she returned to the center of the
room and spoke rapidly to the Englishman, gesturing occasionally
toward the body of the slain man. When he could not understand,
she presently became provoked and in a sudden hysteria of madness
she rushed forward as though to strike the Englishman. Smith-Oldwick
dropped back a few steps and leveled his pistol upon her. Mad though
she must have been, she evidently was not so mad but what she had
connected the loud report, the diminutive weapon, and the sudden
death of the man in whose house she dwelt, for she instantly desisted
and quite as suddenly as it had come upon her, her homicidal mood
departed.

Again the vacuous, imbecile smile took possession of her features,
and her voice, dropping its harshness, resumed the soft, well-modulated
tones with which she had first addressed him. Now she attempted by
s