r this poor young lady fell.
I was looking at coins just beyond the partition there, when I heard a
gasping cry. I had not heard her fall--I fear I was very much preoccupied
in my search for an especial coin I had been told I should find here--but
I did hear the cry she gave, and startled by the sound, left the section
where I was and entered this one, only to see just what you are seeing
now."

The Curator pointed at the two women.

"This? The one woman kneeling over the other with her hand on the arrow?"

"Yes, sir."

A change took place in the Curator's expression. Involuntarily his eyes
rose to the walls hung closely with Indian relics, among which was a
quiver in which all could see arrows similar to the one now in the breast
of the young girl lying dead before them.

"This woman must be made to speak," he said in answer to the low murmur
which followed this discovery. "If there is a doctor present----"

Waiting, but receiving no response, he withdrew his hand from the woman's
arm and laid it on the arrow.

This roused her completely. Loosing her own grasp upon the shaft, she
cried, with sudden realization of the people pressing about her:

"I could not draw it. That causes death, they say. Wait! she may still be
alive. She may have a word to speak."

She was bending to listen. It was hardly a favorable moment for further
questioning, but the Curator in his anxiety could not refrain from
saying:

"Who is she? What is her name and what is yours?"

"Her name?" repeated the woman, rising to face him again. "How should I
know? I was passing through this gallery and had just stopped to take a
look into the court when this young girl bounded by me from behind and
flinging up her arms, fell with a deep sigh to the floor. I saw an arrow
in her breast, and----"

Emotion choked her, and when some one asked if the girl was a stranger to
her, she simply bowed her head; then, letting her gaze pass from face to
face till it had completed the circle of those about her, she said in her
former mechanical way:

"My name is Ermentrude Taylor. I came to look at the bronzes. I should
like to go now."

But the crowd which had formed about her was too compact to allow her to
pass. Besides, the director, Mr. Roberts, had something to say first.
Working his way forward, he waited till he had attracted her attention
and then remarked in his most considerate manner:

"You will pardon these importunities, Mrs. Taylor. I am