s started as if a
thunder-bolt had fallen at his feet.

"In Mrs. Clemmens' house!" he repeated, amid the excited hum of a
hundred murmuring voices. "Did you say, in Mrs. Clemmens' house?"

"Yes," she returned, with a wild, ironical smile that at once assured
Mr. Ferris of his helplessness. "I am on oath _now_, and I assert that
on the day and at the hour Mrs. Clemmens was murdered, I was in her
house and in her dining-room. I had come there secretly," she proceeded,
with a sudden feverish fluency that robbed Mr. Ferris of speech, and in
fact held all her auditors spell-bound. "I had been spending an hour or
so at Professor Darling's, whose house in West Side is, as many here
know, at the very end of Summer Avenue, and close to the woods that run
along back of Mrs. Clemmens' cottage. I had been sitting alone in the
observatory, which is at the top of one of the towers, but being
suddenly seized with a desire to see the widow and make that promised
attempt at persuading her to reconsider her decision in regard to the
money her--her--the prisoner wanted, I came down, and unknown to any
one in the house, stole away to the woods and so to the widow's
cottage. It was noon when I got there, or very near it, for her company,
if she had had any, was gone, and she was engaged in setting the clock
where----"

Why did she pause? The District Attorney, utterly stupefied by his
surprise, had made no sign; neither had Mr. Orcutt. Indeed, it looked as
if the latter could not have moved, much less spoken, even if he had
desired it. Thought, feeling, life itself, seemed to be at a standstill
within him as he sat with a face like clay, waiting for words whose
import he perhaps saw foreshadowed in her wild and terrible mien. But
though his aspect was enough to stop her, it was not upon him she was
gazing when the words tripped on her lips. It was upon the prisoner, on
the man who up to this time had borne himself with such iron-like
composure and reserve, but who now, with every sign of feeling and
alarm, had started forward and stood surveying her, with his hand
uplifted in the authoritative manner of a master.

The next instant he sank back, feeling the eye of the Judge upon him;
but the signal had been made, and many in that court-room looked to see
Imogene falter or break down. But she, although fascinated, perhaps
moved, by this hint of feeling from one who had hitherto met all the
exigencies of the hour with a steady and firm com