The coroner, who is an older man than myself, betrayed a certain satisfaction but no dread. Never did the unction which underlies his sharpest speeches show more plainly than when he quietly remarked: “And so under a similar impulse you, as well as Mr. Jeffrey, chose this uncanny place to ramble in. To all appearance that old hearth acted much more like a lodestone upon members of your family than you were willing at one time to acknowledge.” This reference to words she had herself been heard to use seemed to overwhelm her. Her calmness fled and she cast a fleeting look of anguish at Mr. Jeffrey. But his face was turned from sight, and, meeting with no help there, or anywhere, indeed, save in her own powerful nature, she recovered as best she could the ground she had lost and, with a trembling question of her own, attempted to put the coroner in fault and reestablish herself. “You say ‘ramble through.’ Do you for a moment think that I entered that old house?” “Miss Tuttle,” was the grave, almost sad reply, “did you not know that in some earth, dropped from a flower-pot overturned at the time when a hundred guests flew in terror from this house, there is to be seen the mark of a footstep,—a footstep which you are at liberty to measure with your own?” “Ah!” she murmured, her hands going up to her face. But in another moment she had dropped them and looked directly at the coroner. “I walked there—I never said that I did not walk there—when I went later to see my sister and in sight of a number of detectives passed straight through the halls and into the library.” “And that this footstep,” inexorably proceeded the coroner, “is not in a line with the main thoroughfare extending from the front to the back of the house, but turned inwards toward the wall as if she who made it had stopped to lean her head against the partition?” Miss Tuttle’s head drooped. Probably she realized at this moment, if not before, that the coroner and jury had ample excuse for mistrusting one who had been so unmistakably caught in a prevarication; possibly her regret carried her far enough to wish she had not disdained all legal advice from those who had so earnestly offered it. But though she showed alike her shame and her disheartenment, she did not give up the struggle. “If I went into the house,” she said, “it was not to enter that room. I had too great a dread of it. If I rested my head against the wall it was in terror of that shot. It came so suddenly and was so frightful, so much more frightful than anything you can conceive.” “Then you did enter the house?” “I did.” “And it was while you were inside, instead of outside, that you heard the shot?” “I must admit that, too. I was at the library door.” “You acknowledge that?” “I do.” “But you did not enter the library?” “No, not then; not till I was taken back by the officer who told me of my sister’s death.”