dd feeling of elation that, in a further examination of
this room, I came upon two additional facts equally odd and
irreconcilable.

One was the presence of a penknife with the file blade open, on a
small table under the window marked by the loosened shutter.
Scattered about it were some filings which shone as the light from
my lantern fell upon them, but which were so fine as to call for a
magnifying-glass to make them out. The other was in connection with
a closet not far from the great bed. It was an empty closet so far
as the hooks went and the two great drawers which I found standing
half open at its back; but in the middle of the floor lay an
overturned candelabrum similar to the one below, but with its prisms
scattered and its one candle crushed and battered out of all shape
on the blackened boards. If upset while alight, the foot which had
stamped upon it in a wild endeavor to put out the flames had been a
frenzied one. Now, by whom had this frenzy been shown, and when?
Within the hour? I could detect no smell of smoke. At some former
time, then? say on the day of the bridal?

Glancing from the broken candle at my feet to the one giving its last
sputter in the tumbler on the dressing table, I owned myself perplexed.

Surely, no ordinary explanation fitted these extraordinary and
seemingly contradictory circumstances.

IV

SIGNED, VERONICA

I am in some ways hypersensitive. Among my other weaknesses I have
a wholesome dread of ridicule, and this is probably why I failed to
press my theory on the captain when he appeared, and even forbore
to mention the various small matters which had so attracted my
attention. If he and the experienced men who came with him saw
suicide and nothing but suicide in this lamentable shooting of a
bride of two weeks, then it was not for me to suggest a deeper
crime, especially as one of the latter eyed me with open scorn when
I proposed to accompany them upstairs into the room where the light
had been seen burning. No, I would keep my discoveries to myself
or, at least, forbear to mention them till I found the captain
alone, asking nothing at this juncture but permission to remain in
the house till Mr. Jeffrey arrived.

I had been told that an officer had gone for this gentleman, and
when I heard the sound of wheels in front I made a rush for the
door, in my anxiety to catch a glimpse of him. But it was a woman
who alighted.

As this woman was in a state