Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, a _Herald_ man and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad taste to die on the morning paper's time. And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing chariot--with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her door, saw in the street the Something for which she had peered past me the other night. The men carried it in at the door, and laid it on the divan. Josie, her arms and shoulders still bare in the dress she had worn to the wedding, broke away from Cornish, who was bending over her and saying things to comfort her, and swept down the hall to the divan where Bill lay, white and still, and clothed with the mystic majesty of death. The shimmering silk and lace of her gown lay all along the rug and over the divan, like drapery thrown there to conceal what lay before us. She threw her arms across the still breast, and her head went down on his. "Oh, pa! Oh, pa!" she moaned, "you never did any one any harm!... You were always good and kind!... And always loving and forgiving.... And why should they come to you, poor pa ... and take you from the things you loved ... and ... murder you ... like this!" Jim fell back, as if staggering from a blow. Cornish came forward, and offered to raise up the stricken girl, whose eyes shone in her grief like the eyes of insanity. Alice stepped before Cornish, raised Josie up, and supported her from the room. * * * * * Again it was morning, when we--Alice, Jim, and I--sat face to face in our home. An untasted breakfast was spread before us. Jim's eyes were on the cloth, and nothing served to rouse him. I knew that the blow from which he had staggered still benumbed his faculties. "Come," said I, "we shall need your best thought down at the Grain Belt Building in a couple of hours. This brings things to a crisis. We shall have a terrible dilemma to face, it's likely. Eat and be ready to face it!" "God!" said he, "it's the old tale over again, Al: throw the dead and wounded overboard to clear the decks, and on with the fight!" CHAPTER XIX. In Which Events Resume their Usual Course--at a Somewhat Accelerated Pace.