e clothes of both men were torn, and when Ravelli regained
his feet blood was dripping from his hand. The blade had cut it.

"You meant to kill me," Gerald exclaimed.

"I said-a so," was the sullen, menacing response.

"And with my own knife!" and Gerald, picking up the knife, recognized
it.

"Your own knife--ze one zat you carve-a Mary's hand with so lovingly."

Ravelli had retained it since the previous afternoon, when he had picked
it up from Mary Warriner's desk. Its blade was now red with blood, as
Gerald shut and pocketed it.

"You cowardly murderer!"

"Murderer? Not-a yet. But I meant to be."

Ravelli turned off by the cross-path, and Gerald passed on.

CHAPTER III.

The first man to go to work at Overlook in the morning was Jim Wilson,
because he had to rouse the fire under a boiler early enough to provide
steam for a score of rock drills. The night watchman awakened him at
daybreak, according to custom, and then got into a bunk as the other got
out of one.

"Everything all right?" Jim asked.

"I guess so," the other replied. "But I hain't seen your boiler sence
before midnight. Eph was disturbin' Mary Mite, and so I hung 'round her
cabin pretty much the last half of the night."

Jim went to his post at the boiler, and at an unaccustomed pace, from
the point where he first saw and heard steam hissing upward from the
safety valve. On quitting the night previous, he had banked the fire as
usual, and this morning he should have found it burning so slowly that
an hour of raking, replenishing, and open draughts would no more than
start the machinery at seven o'clock. Going nearer he found that open
dampers and a fresh supply of coal had set the furnace raging.

What was that which protruded from the open door, and so nearly filled
the aperture that the draught was not impaired?

A glance gave the answer. It was the legs and half the body of a man,
whose head and shoulders were thoroughly charred, as Jim was horrified
to see when he pulled the remains out upon the ground.

Jim ran to tell the superintendent, and within a few minutes a knot of
excited men surrounded the body. The gathering grew in numbers rapidly.
By means of the clothing the dead and partially burned man was
identified at once as Tonio Ravelli. That he had been murdered was an
equally easy conclusion. The murderer had apparently sought to cremate
the corpse. Whether he had found it physically impossible, or had been
frighte