a director of
this museum, and if Mr. Jewett will excuse me,"--here he bowed to the
Curator,--"I should like to inquire from what direction the arrow came
which ended this young girl's life?"

For a moment she stood aghast, fixing him with her eye as though to ask
whither this inquiry tended. Then with an air of intention which was not
without some strange element of fear, she allowed her glance to travel
across the court till it rested upon the row of connected arches facing
them from the opposite gallery.

"Ah," said he, putting her look into words, "you think the arrow came
from the other side of the building. Did you see anyone over there,--in
the gallery, I mean,--at or before the instant of this young girl's
fall?"

She shook her head.

"Did any of _you_?" he urged, with his eyes on the crowd. "Some one must
have been looking that way."

But no answer came, and the silence was fast becoming oppressive when
these words, whispered by one woman to another, roused them anew and
sent every glance again to the walls--even hers for whose benefit this
remark had possibly been made:

"But there are no arrows over there. All the arrows are here."

She was right. They were here, quiver after quiver of them; nor were they
all beyond reach. As the woman thus significantly assailed noted this and
saw with what suspicion others noted it also, a decided change took place
in her aspect.

"I should like to sit down," she murmured. Possibly she was afraid she
might fall.

As some one brought a chair, she spoke, but very tremulously, to the
director:

"Are there no arrows in the rooms over there?"

"I am quite sure not."

"And no bows?"

"None."

"If--if anyone had been seen in the gallery----"

"No one was."

"You are sure of that?"

"You heard the question asked. It brought no answer."

"But--but these galleries are visible from below. Some one may have been
looking up from the court and----"

"If there was any such person in the building, he would have been here by
this time. People don't hold back such information."

"Then--then--" she stammered, her eyes taking on a hunted look, "you
conclude--these people conclude _what_?"

"Madam,"--the word came coldly, stinging her into drawing herself to her
full height,--"it is not for me to conclude in a case like this. That is
the business of the police."

At this word, with its suggestion of crime, her air of conscious power
vanished in sudden collapse. P