But men in the position of Coroner Z. can not afford to be compassionate. Everything the bereaved man said deepened the impression that he was acting a part. To make sure that this was really so, the coroner, with just the slightest touch of sarcasm, quietly observed: “And to ease your wife’s mind—the wife you were so deeply angered with—you visited this house, and, at an hour which you should have spent in reconciliation with her, went through its ancient rooms in the hope—of what?” Mr. Jeffrey could not answer. The words which came from his lips were mere ejaculations. “I was restless—mad—I found this adventure diverting. I had no real purpose in mind.” “Not when you looked at the old picture?” “The old picture? What old picture?” “The old picture in the southwest chamber. You took a look at that, didn’t you? Got up on a chair on purpose to do so?” Mr. Jeffrey winced. But he made a direct reply. “Yes, I gave a look at that old picture; got up, as you say, on a chair to do so. Wasn’t that the freak of an idle man, wandering, he hardly knows why, from room to room in an old and deserted house?” His tormentor did not answer. Probably his mind was on his next line of inquiry. But Mr. Jeffrey did not take his silence with the calmness he had shown prior to the last attack. As no word came from his unwelcome guest, he paused in his rapid pacing and, casting aside with one impulsive gesture his hitherto imperfectly held restraint, he cried out sharply: “Why do you ask me these questions in tones of such suspicion? Is it not plain enough that my wife took her own life under a misapprehension of my state of mind toward her, that you should feel it necessary to rake up these personal matters, which, however interesting to the world at large, are of a painful nature to me?” “Mr. Jeffrey,” retorted the other, with a sudden grave assumption of dignity not without its effect in a case of such serious import, “we do nothing without purpose. We ask these questions and show this interest because the charge of suicide which has hitherto been made against your wife is not entirely sustained by the facts. At least she was not alone when she took her life. Some one was in the house with her.” It was startling to observe the effect of this declaration upon him. “Impossible!” he cried out in a protest as forcible as it was agonized. “You are playing with my misery. She could have had no one there; she would not. There is not a man living before whom she would have fired that deadly shot; unless it was myself,—unless it was my own wretched, miserable self.”