ndow and leave the other and the deadly phial near her
hand. This, before I left the room. Then I was to call up the police and
say there was something wrong at the club-house, but I was not to give my
name or ever acknowledge I was there. 'Nothing can save trouble,' she
said, 'but that trouble must not come near you. Swear that you will heed
my words--swear that you will do what I say,'

"I swore. All that she asked I promised. I was almost dying, too; and had
the light gone out and the rafters of the house fallen in and buried us
both, it would have been better. But the light burned on, and the life in
her eyes faded out, and the hands grasping mine relaxed. I heard one
little gasp; then a low prayer: 'Tell Arthur never--never--again to--'
Then--silence!"

Sobs--cries--veiled faces--then silence in the courtroom, too. It was
broken but by one sound, a heartrending sigh from the prisoner. But
nobody looked at him, and thank God!--nobody looked at me. Every eye was
on the face of this young girl, whose story bore such an impress of
truth, and yet was so contradictory of all former evidence. What
revelations were yet to follow. It would seem that she was speaking of
her sister's death.

But her sister had not died that way; her sister had been strangled.
Could this dainty creature, with beauty scarred and yet powerfully
triumphant, be the victim of an hallucination as to the cause of that
scar and the awesome circumstances which attended its infliction? Or,
harder still to believe, were these soul-compelling tones, these
evidences of grief, this pathetic yielding to the rights of the law in
face of the heart's natural shrinking from disclosures sacred as they
were tragic--were these the medium by which she sought to mislead justice
and to conceal truth?

Even I, with my memory of her looks as she faltered down the staircase on
that memorable night--pale, staring, her left hand to her cheek and
rocking from side to side in pain or terror--could not but ask if this
heart-rending story did not involve a still more terrible sequel. I
searched her face, and racked my very soul, in my effort to discern what
lay beneath this angelic surface--beneath this recital which if it were
true and the whole truth, would call not only for the devotion of a
lifetime, but a respect transcending love and elevating it to worship.

But, in her cold and quiet features, I could detect nothing beyond the
melancholy of grief; and the suspense