Compared with the gloom of the rest of the house, with its drawn blinds, this landing, with its wide, staring, uncovered window, was especially bright. Jelly glanced round, it might have been thought nervously, only that she was not a nervous woman. Here, in the middle of the floor, at one o'clock in the morning, her face turned to that window, had stood Mrs. Rane. If not Mrs. Rane--who?--or what? "Phillis," whispered Jelly, "I should like to see her." "You can't," answered Phillis. "Nonsense. I am not afraid." "But you can't, Jelly. She is fastened down." "She is---- Why what do you mean?" broke off Jelly. Phillis took up a corner of the sheet, unlocked the door--in which the key was left--and opened it half an inch for Jelly to peep in. There, in the middle of the grey room stood a closed coffin, supported on trestles. In the shock of surprise Jelly fell back against the wall, and began to tremble. The idea that came over her--as she said to some one afterwards--was, that Mrs. Rane had been put into the coffin alive. What with the sight of the previous night (and Jelly did not yet fully admit to herself what that sight might have been), and what with this, she felt in a sort of hopeless horror and bewilderment. Recovering a little, she pushed past the sheet into the room, but with creeping, timid steps. "Jelly, I wouldn't go in! The master charged _me_ not to do so." But Jelly heard not. Or, if she heard, did not heed. It was a common deal shell: nailed down. Jelly touched it with her finger. "_When_ was she put in here, Phillis?" "Sometime during the night." "And fastened down at once?" "To be sure. I found it like this when I came this morning." "But--why need there have been so much haste?" "Because it was safest so. Safest for us that are living, as my master said. The leaden one will be here to-day." Well--of course it was safer. Jelly could but acknowledge it, and recovered somewhat. She wished she had not seen--that--in the night. It was that sight, so unaccountable, that was now troubling her mind so strangely. With her usual want of ceremony, Jelly opened the bedroom door and looked in. It had not been put straight: Phillis said her master would not let her go in to do anything to it until the two rooms should have been disinfected. Medicine bottles stood about; the bed-clothes lay over the foot of the bed, just as Hepburn's men must have placed them when they removed the dead. On the dressing-table lay a bow of blue ribbon that poor Bessy had worn in her gown the last day she had one on, a waistband with his buckle, and other trifles. Jelly began to feel oppressed, as if her breath were growing short, and came away hastily. Phillis stood on the landing beyond the sheet. "It seems like a dream, Phillis." "I wish we could awake and find it one," answered Phillis, practically, as she turned the key in the lock; and they went downstairs.