there. But the doctors shake their heads at the word pistol-shot, though they refuse to explain themselves or to express any opinion till the wound has been probed. This they are going to do at once, and when that question is decided, I may feel it my duty to speak and may ask you to support my story.”      

       “I will tell what I saw,” said I.     

       “Very good. That is all that will be required. We are strangers to the parties concerned, and only speak from a sense of justice. It may be that our story will make no impression, and that we shall be dismissed with but few thanks. But that is nothing to us. If the woman has been murdered, he is the murderer. With such a conviction in my mind, there can be no doubt as to my duty.”      

       “We can never make them understand how he looked.”      

       “No. I don’t expect to.”      

       “Or his manner as he fled.”      

       “Nor that either.”      

       “We can only describe what we saw him do.”      

       “That’s all.”      

       “Oh, what an adventure for quiet people like us! George, I don’t believe he shot her.”      

       “He must have.”      

       “But they would have seen—have heard—the people around, I mean.”      

       “So they say; but I have a theory—but no matter about that now. I’m going down again to see how things have progressed. I’ll be back for you later. Only be ready.”      

       Be ready! I almost laughed,—a hysterical laugh, of course, when I recalled the injunction. Be ready! This lonely sitting by myself, with nothing to do but think was a fine preparation for a sudden appearance before those men—some of them police-officers, no doubt.     

       But that’s enough about myself; I’m not the heroine of this story. In a half hour or an hour—I never knew 

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