I turned meekly and crawled back with as much dignity as I could. I did not say anything. There was nothing I could bawl from the roof. I could only close and lock the window and hope that the people in the next house still slept. Mr. Patton must have gone shortly after, for I did not see him again. I wondered if he had relieved the night watch, or if he could possibly have been on guard himself all that chilly April night. Mr. Reed did not breakfast with us. I made a point of being cheerful before the children, and their mother was rested and brighter than I had seen her. But more than once I found her staring at me in a puzzled way. She asked me if I had slept. “I wakened only once,” she said. “I thought I heard a crash of some sort. Did you hear it?” “What sort of a crash?” I evaded. The children had forgotten the goldfish for a time. Now they remembered and clamored their news to her. “Dead?” she said, and looked at me. “Poisoned,” I explained. “I shall nail the windows over the porte-cochère shut, Mrs. Reed. The boys got out there early this morning and picked up something—bread, I believe. They fed it to the fish and—they are dead.” All the light went out of her face. She looked tired and harassed as she got up. “I wanted to nail the window,” she said vaguely, “but Mr. Reed—— Suppose they had eaten that bread, Miss Adams, instead of giving it to the fish!” The same thought had chilled me with horror. We gazed at each other over the unconscious heads of the children and my heart ached for her. I made a sudden resolution. “When I first came,” I said to her, “I told you I wanted to help. That’s what I’m here for. But how am I to help either you or the children when I do not know what danger it is that threatens? It isn’t fair to you, or to them, or even to me.” She was much shaken by the poison incident. I thought she wavered. “Are you afraid the children will be stolen?” “Oh, no.” “Or hurt in any way?” I was thinking of the bread on the roof. “No.” “But you are afraid of something?” Harry looked up suddenly. “Mother’s never afraid,” he said stoutly. I sent them both in to see if the fish were still dead. “There is something in the house downstairs that you are afraid of?” I persisted. She took a step forward and caught my arm. “I had no idea it would be like this, Miss Adams. I’m dying of fear!” I had a quick vision of the swathed head on the back staircase, and some of my night’s terror came back to me. I believe we stared at each other with dilated pupils for a moment. Then I asked: “Is it a real thing?—surely you can tell me this. Are you afraid of a reality, or—is it something supernatural?” I was ashamed of the question. It sounded so absurd in the broad light of that April morning. “It is a real danger,” she replied. Then I think she decided that she had gone as far as she dared, and I went through the ceremony of letting her out and of locking the door behind her.