d and his face fell forward upon them, and
they heard a groan. Then in the short silence which followed, another and
a very different sound broke upon their ears. Seven clear calls from the
cuckoo-clock rang out from the room beyond, followed by a woman's
smothered cry.

It was the one ironic touch the situation had lacked. It pierced the
heart of Carleton Roberts and started him in anguish to his feet.

"O God!" he cried, "that I should have let that thing of evil shriek
out the wicked hours from day to day, only to torment her now with old
remembrances! Why did I not crush it to atoms long ago? Why did I leave
it hanging on my wall----"

With a dash he was in the hall. In another instant he was at the door of
his bedroom, followed by the two officials crowding closely up behind
him.

Would they find her there? Yes; where else should she be, she whom this
call from the past might almost draw from the grave! She was there, but
not in the spot where they had expected to see her, nor in that state of
collapse of which her former weakness had given promise. Apart from Mr.
Gryce, with her form drawn up to its full height she stood, with her
finger pointing not at the cuckoo-clock as would seem most natural, but
at a small newspaper print of the dead girl's face pinned up on another
wall.

"Why is that here?" she cried in a passionate inquiry which ignored every
other presence than that of him who must heed and answer her. "Carleton,
Carleton, why have you pinned that young girl's face up opposite your bed
where you can see it on waking, where it can look at you and you at
it--Or----" here checked by a sudden thought she broke off, and her tone
changed to one of doubt, "perhaps you did not put it there yourself?
Perhaps its presence on your wall is a trick of the police to startle you
into betrayal. Was it? Was it?"

"No, Ermentrude." The words came slowly but firmly. "I put it there
myself. I thought it would haunt me less than if left to my imagination."

Then in a low tone which perhaps reached no other ears than hers:

"I do not know what it does to me; or what I see in it. Something besides
youth and beauty. Something----"

"Hush!" She had him by the arm. "Forget it; these men are listening----"

But with a convulsive movement, he broke from her hold, and in so doing
his eyes fell on a mirror confronting him from the opposite side of the
room. Two faces were visible in it, his own and that of his young victim