When that white-faced woman, whose threatening finger had pointed at the assassin as he fled, recovered from her horror--she was but a poor concierge who had happened to be seeking her bed--she rushed forth into the open place where Douglas's body lay, and there, with wild and piercing shrieks, awakened all who dwelt round the cathedral. At first she conveyed to those who hurried to the spot the idea that it was she who was the shedder of blood, for, as she threw herself down by the victim's side to see if any spark of life remained, her own white night garments became stained with the dreadful fluid, so that those hurrying to the scene imagined that they saw a guilty woman screaming over her own evil deed. But as she grew more composed she was able to tell her tale coherently; to relate how, in curiosity, she had stood watching those two conversing there; how she had seen the blow struck, and the murderer flee into the darkness. She was very poor, she said, every sou was worth taking account of; therefore, on moonlight nights, she sought her bed without candlelight. Yet now she bemoaned her thrift, for had she but burnt a light it might have alarmed the assassin--have saved the unhappy victim. "But _mort de ma vie!_" exclaimed the chief of the watch, who by this time had arrived with two or three of his subordinates, "why not rush out and follow the man; why not at least open the window and scream? _Peste!_ you women can do that if a mouse scampers across the floor or your husband reproves you, yet, behold! when a man is done to death you hold your tongue." The poor affrighted creature, still whimpering and shivering, explained that she had no thought of murder being about to be done; she had supposed they were two friends parting for the night; there was no sign of argument or quarrel, and, when the deed was done, she thought she had swooned for a moment or so. She could say no more. "_Peste!_" again exclaimed the chief of the watch--a tetchy man given to examining all kinds of characters from midnight revellers and wassailers to housebreakers and worse, "why not do something better than swoon? And I'll be sworn, too, that you would not know the fellow again even though he came back this instant itself." But to this the woman protested her dissent. She would know him again anywhere, at once or at a long interval, adding with a shudder that "for ever and as long as she should live, his features were stamped into her memory." "What was he like, then?" asked the chief, "how clad?" "Fairly tall," she replied, "though not so tall, I think, as _that_," and she glanced at poor Douglas's body lying in the centre of the crowd that surrounded it. The chief of the watch, and a doctor who had come from out a house near, had examined it at once on their arrival, and, alas! there was no life left in it. The gentle spirit had flown.