the opened casement blew the curtains far
into the room and rustled the papers on the table, the light of which
was pushed back and the papers redd up, as if the business of the
evening were by with.

I stepped softly to the sitting man and touched him on the shoulder,
and, as I did so, fell back with a loud cry, while a voice with which I
seemed to have nothing to do cried out:

"He's been murdered! He's shot! He's dead!"

I can not recall what other words this personless voice cried out, but
I know that I stood staring at this man who but a few hours before had
been so hated, feared, aye, and admired; staring at his dreadful
pallor, his inhuman repose, and his inscrutable smile, as he sat before
me with the blood trickling down the side of his face from a
bullet-hole just over the temple.

In the first sight I had of him I knew that he was dead; the feeling of
death was around him; there was death in the air, in the awful serenity
of the pale face, in the hands which lay motionless and relaxed, as if
surrendering all; in the faint smile, as though Death himself had come
before the great man's vision and had been regarded calmly before his
work was done; and while the four of us were standing, drunk with fear
at this awful sight, there came to us the sound of carriage-wheels and
gay voices, and before the power of action was with any of us, Nancy
stood in the doorway, her eyes filled with laughter, her scarlet lips
curved backward in a smile as she came forward to the place where I
stood.

"Are ye giving a ball while the mistress of the house is from home?"
she inquired, gayly; and, as the queerness of our actions struck her:
"What is it?" she cried; and again, "What is it?"

To save her, some power of thought came back to my disordered mind.

"Come away, Nancy! Come away with me!" I cried; but before I could
reach her she had moved forward toward the dead, her head lowered, her
eyes widened with terror, and at sight of the blood clapped her hands
over her eyes to shut out the horrid sight, and went white, and but for
me would have fallen.

The telling of this takes longer than the acting of it, for it was less
than a minute before she called, with some authority in her tone:

"Send them away, Jock. Send them all away! Leave me alone with him."

I motioned the men from the room. It was the common belief that his
grace was Nancy's accepted lover, and there seemed nothing strange in
her request to be alone w