"Halloa! What's this? Johnny! Susan!--all of you come here! Here's somebody lying here. It must be the poor girl. Goodness bless my heart! Johnny, help me to raise her!" Still and white she was lying, underneath the opening of the staircase. Upon lifting her head, it fell back in a curious manner. We both backed a little. Susan held the candle nearer. As its light fell on the upturned face, the girl shrieked. "She is in a fit," cried Matilda. "God help her!" whispered the Squire. "I fear this is something worse than a fit. We must have a doctor." Susan thrust the candlestick into my hand, and ran out at the back door, saying she'd fetch Mr. Lockett. Back she came in a moment: the garden gate was locked, and the key not in it. "There's the front door, girl," stuttered the Squire, angry with her for returning, though it was no fault of hers. He was like one off his head, and his nose and cheeks had turned blue. But there could be no more exit by the front door than by the back. It was locked, and the key gone. Who had done these things? what strange mystery was here? Locking the poor girl in the house to kill her! Matilda, who had lighted another candle, found the key of the back gate lying on the kitchen dresser. Susan caught it up, and flew away. It was a most uncomfortable moment. There lay Jane Cross, pale and motionless, and it seemed that we were helpless to aid her. "Ask that stupid thing to bring a pillow or a cushion, Johnny! Ghosts, indeed! The idiots that women are!" "What else has done it? what else was there to hurt her?" remonstrated Matilda, bringing up the second candle. "She wouldn't fall into a fit for nothing, sir." And now that more light was present, we began to see other features of the scene. Nearly close to Jane Cross lay a work-basket, overturned, a flat, open basket, a foot and a half square. Reels of cotton, scissors, tapes, small bundles of work tied up, and such-like things lay scattered around. The Squire looked at these, and then at the opening above. "Can she have fallen down the well?" he asked, in a low tone. And Matilda, catching the words, gave a cry of dismay, and burst into tears. "A pillow, girl! A pillow, or a cushion!" She went into one of the sitting-rooms and brought out a sofa-cushion. The Squire, going down on his knees, for he was not good at stooping, told me to slip it under while he raised the head. A sound of feet, a sudden flash of light from a bull's-eye, and a policeman came upon the scene. The man was quietly passing on his beat when met by Susan. In her excitement she told him what had happened, and sent him in. We knew the man, whose beat lay at this end of Saltwater; a civil man, named Knapp. He knelt down where the Squire had just been kneeling, touching Jane Cross here and there. "She's dead, sir," he said. "There can be no mistake about that." "She must have fallen down the well of the staircase, I fear," observed the Squire.