In an instant, every eye, including Mr. Byrd's, was fixed upon the speaker. The crowd parted, and the young girl, who had spoken from the street, came into the gate. She was a remarkable-looking person. Tall, large, and majestic in every proportion of an unusually noble figure, she was of a make and possessed a bearing to attract attention had she borne a less striking and beautiful countenance. As it was, the glance lingered but a moment on the grand curves and lithe loveliness of that matchless figure, and passed at once to the face. Once there, it did not soon wander; for though its beauty was incontestable, the something that lay behind that beauty was more incontestable still, and held you, in spite of yourself, long after you had become acquainted with the broad white brow, the clear, deep, changing gray eye, the straight but characteristic nose, and the ruddy, nervous lip. You felt that, young and beautiful as she was, and charming as she might be, she was also one of nature's unsolvable mysteries--a woman whom you might study, obey, adore, but whom you could never hope to understand; a Sphinx without an Oedipus. She was dressed in dark green, and held her gloves in her hand. Her appearance was that of one who had been profoundly startled. "Why don't some one answer me?" she asked, after an instant's pause, seemingly unconscious that, alike to those who knew her and to those who did not, her air and manner were such as to naturally impose silence. "Must I go into the house in order to find out if this good woman is dead or not?" "Shure she isn't dead yet," spoke up a brawny butcher-boy, bolder than the rest. "But she's sore hurt, miss, and the doctors say as how there is no hope." A change impossible to understand passed over the girl's face. Had she been less vigorous of body, she would have staggered. As it was, she stood still, rigidly still, and seemed to summon up her faculties, till the very clinch of her fingers spoke of the strong control she was putting upon herself. "It is dreadful, dreadful!" she murmured, this time in a whisper, and as if to some rising protest in her own soul. "No good can come of it, none." Then, as if awakening to the scene about her, shook her head and cried to those nearest: "It was a tramp who did it, I suppose; at least, I am told so." "A tramp has been took up, miss, on suspicion, as they call it." "If a tramp has been taken up on suspicion, then he was the one who assailed her, of course." And pushing on through the crowd that fell back still more awe-struck than before, she went into the house. The murmur that followed her was subdued but universal. It made no impression on Mr. Byrd. He had leaned forward to watch the girl's retreating form, but, finding his view intercepted by the wrinkled profile of an old crone who had leaned forward too, had drawn impatiently back. Something in that crone's aged face made him address her. "You know the lady?" he inquired.