"Well now, to go to something else: Did she bring her work-basket downstairs with her from the bedroom when she remarked to you that she would go and put the supper on?" "No, she did not." "You are sure of that?" "Yes. She left the basket on the chair in front of her where it had been standing. She just got up and shook the threads from off her gown, and went on down. When I left the room the basket was there; I saw it. And I think," added the girl, with a great sob, "I think that while laying the supper she must have gone upstairs again to fetch the basket, and must have fallen against the banisters with fright, and overbalanced herself." "Fright at what?" asked Knapp. Matilda shivered. Susan whispered to him that they were afraid at night of seeing the ghost of Mr. Edmund Peahern. The man glanced keenly at Matilda for a minute. "Did you ever see it?" he asked. "No," she shuddered. "But there are strange noises, and we think it is in the house." "Well," said Knapp, coughing to hide a comical smile, "ghosts don't tear pieces out of gowns--that ever I heard of. I should say it was something worse than a ghost that has been here to-night. Had this poor girl any sweetheart?" "No," said Matilda. "Have you one?" "No." "Except Owen the milkman." A red streak flashed into Matilda's cheeks. I knew Owen: he was Mrs. Blair's milkman also. "I think Owen must be your sweetheart or hers," went on Knapp. "I've seen him, often enough, talking and laughing with you both when bringing the afternoon's milk round. Ten minutes at a stretch he has stayed in this garden, when he need not have been as many moments." "There has been no harm: and it's nothing to anybody," said Matilda. The key of the front door was searched for, high and low; but it could not be found. Whoever locked the door, must have made off with the key. But for that, and for the evidences of the scuffle above and the pieces torn out of the gown, we should have thought Matilda's opinion was correct: that Jane Cross had gone upstairs for her basket, and through some wretched accident had pitched over the balustrades. Matilda could not relinquish the notion. "It was only a week ago that ever was--a week ago this very day--that Jane Cross nearly fell over there. We were both running upstairs, trying in sport which should get first into our bedroom; and, in jostling one another on the landing, she all but overbalanced herself. I caught hold of her to save her. It's true--if it were the last word I had to speak." Matilda broke down, with a dreadful fit of sobbing. Altogether she struck me as being about as excitable a young woman as one could meet in a summer day's journey.