He sank down in a chair and sat on all alone in the room, where the lights were bright and the supper still waited upon the table in festive expectancy. Every now and then his eyes traveled around the room with its air of frozen gayety, but always they returned to the floor, and so he remained, his legs stretched out in front of him, his hands driven into his pockets, and his head bowed. He sat there a long time until his legs grew stiff and went to sleep. Then he stirred uneasily, drawing them in, and looking again at the waiting meal. “I reckon I better eat something; it’s gettin’ late,” he whispered to himself. He turned to the table and helped himself to some food tentatively, but as he did so he caught sight of Julie’s apron where it had fallen to the floor from its accustomed hook. “Honey, your apron’s on the floor,” he said. He rose stiffly and going over picked up the checked gingham, but when he thought it was secure on the hook it fell down in soft folds against him, and he clutched it suddenly to his breast. “Honey! Julie! _Don’t_ take it so hard!” he cried. After the apron was once more restored, he came back and looked at the table and knew that it was impossible to eat. “I reckon I better clear things away,” he thought drearily. He began moving very quietly and carefully about the room, doing everything as nearly as Julie would have done it as he could. He put all the food away in the ice-box, folded up the linen, and set the china in its place. But his hands were not very steady, and as he picked up one of the rosebud cups, a sudden noise upstairs made him start, and it fell out of his hands and crashed to the floor. “Aw--Oh! I’ve broken your cup,” he cried in dismay. He stooped, and gathering up all the pieces tried ineffectively to fit them together. “One of your best cups, honey, you thought so much of: I’ve broke it,” he confessed. Suddenly the edges he was trying to fit together blurred in a dazzled line and the tears rushed into his eyes. He laid the shattered pieces in a desolate pile on the table, and stumbling into a chair, buried his head in his arms beside them. Later on, there was a knock at the door and the coroner came in to ask for evidence. Tim gave him the note Miss Fogg had written Julie, and the coroner, a rather sombre dark man with a sallow face and outstanding ears set wide as though to catch every note of horror that the world held, read it, holding it beneath the gas jet that made shining lights on his hair, pausing every now and again to say, “What do you make of that word?” “Well,” he said when he had puzzled it all out, “it’s suicide all right, no question about that. Everybody in the house says the old soul was more’n half cracked, anyhow. I reckon she’s had that pistol loaded an’ handy for some time.” “She had it in that drawer she always kep’ locked,” Tim told him. “Julie said there was one drawer she was always mighty oneasy about.” “Is that so?” said the other. “Yes, Julie said so.”