"The body!" gasped the landlord, with staring eyes fixed on John Temple's face, who did not know he was the father of the unhappy Elsie. "Yes, the poor woman is quite dead, has been dead apparently for hours," answered Temple, and as he spoke a sort of cry escaped the landlord's lips. "Where is she?" he asked in a hoarse voice. "It's not my girl, but still--" "She is suspended from a tree a little farther up the Dene," said John. "I can show you the spot." "Oh, no, no, Mr. Wray!" now cried May, laying her hand on the landlord's arm. "Let father and me go first--it's no sight for you--" But the landlord pushed aside her detaining hand. "Let me go," he said, hoarsely, and he ran forward, followed by the rest. Then when he beheld the ghastly sight, the streaming black hair, the half-open eyes, a great cry escaped his lips. "My girl, my girl!" His words rang through the woods. He flung himself on his knees; he raised the head; he looked wildly in the face. Yes, it was his girl--his Elsie--lying foully murdered in this lone spot! "Elsie, who has done this?" he asked in passionate grief. "Father, help me to disentangle her; to lift her down," now said May, with streaming eyes. "Oh! help us, Mr. Temple!" "Yes," answered John Temple, "I will climb the tree and disentangle her dress. You help to hold her head and body, Mr. Churchill, while I go up." He was slight and active, and soon the poor still form was loose from the branch which had caught and held it in its fall. They laid her gently on the grass. May Churchill knelt down and covered the ghastly face and the blue-edged wound on the shapely throat, and she tried also to draw away the landlord from his dead daughter's side. "Oh, come away, come away, Mr. Wray," she said, pitifully; "this is no place for you--I will stay with her--you go with father." But the unhappy man took no heed of her words. He knelt there holding one of Elsie's cold hands; his eyes were staring from his head with sorrow. "Who killed thee, my lass?" he asked again and again; "thee who had wronged none." "It may have been an accident," suggested May, tearfully and soothingly. But at this moment the doctor and some others arrived on the spot, and the doctor at once knelt down and removed the handkerchief from the face and throat. "This looks like murder," he said, in a low tone, carefully examining the wound. "There is a revolver lying there among the undergrowth," pointed out John Temple. Mr. Churchill went forward at these words to the spot John indicated, and picked up the revolver and looked at it attentively. "Why, Mr. Wray," he said, "this is your revolver--here is your name engraved on it." Then James Wray raised his stony, grief-stricken face, and looked at the revolver in the farmer's hand. "Yes," he said, "it's mine--how did it come here?" "It looks as if she--" "She never brought it--she has been lured here and shot. Oh! my girl, my girl, that I should have lived to see this day!"