Sadly he shook his head. “Can you not guess? Here as elsewhere the plague and the fear of the plague have been busy in your absence.” He sighed, and added abruptly: “Let us go in.” They entered the gloomy vestibule, where dried leaves swept thither by the winds crackled under their feet, and thence they began the ascent of a narrow staircase on the baluster of which there was a mantle of dust. Miss Sylvester called out once or twice as they advanced. But there was no answer to those calls other than the hollow echoes they awoke in that untenanted house. The three rooms that had composed her home were situated on the first floor, and as they ascended to the landing they saw the three doors standing open. Two of the chambers were shuttered, and, therefore, in darkness; but the drawing-room, which directly faced the stair-head, was all in sunlight, and even before they entered it they had a picture of the devastation wrought there. The furniture was not merely disarranged; it was rudely tumbled, some of it broken, and some was missing altogether. Drawers hung open, as they had been pulled by thieving hands, and that part of their contents which had not been considered worth removing now strewed the floor. A glass cabinet which had stood in one angle lay tumbled forward and shattered into fragments. The _secrétaire_ stood open, its lock broken, its contents rifled, a litter of papers tossed upon and about it. The curtains, torn from their poles--one of which hung broken across a window--had disappeared, as had an Eastern rug that had covered a portion of the floor. Dr. Beamish and the lady stood in silence just within the doorway for a long moment, contemplating that dreadful havoc. Then Miss Sylvester moved swiftly forward to the _secrétaire_, in an inner drawer of which she had left a considerable sum of money--representing most of her immediate resources. That inner drawer had been wrenched open; the money was gone. She turned and looked at Dr. Beamish, her face piteous in its white dismay. She tried to speak, but her lip trembled, and her eyes filled again with tears. To have endured so much, and to come home to this! The doctor started forward in answer to the pitiful appeal of that glance. He advanced a chair that happened to be whole, and urged her to sit down and rest, as if the rest she needed were merely physical. She obeyed him, and with hands folded in her lap she sat there looking helplessly around upon the wreckage of her home. “What am I to do? Where am I to turn?” she asked, and almost at once supplied the answer: “I had better go from this accursed place at once. I have an old aunt living in Charmouth. I will return to her.”