The sudden transition from the purely festival character of the atmosphere to the purlieus of grim tragedy told heavily on every nerve. There was one null moment blank of comprehension, and then women were screaming, and more than one fainted; the clamor of overturned benches added to the confusion, as the men, with grim set faces and startled eyes, pressed forward to the stage; the children cowered in mute affright close below the footlights, except one small creature who thought it a part of the fun, not dreaming what death might be, and was laughing aloud in high-keyed mirth down in the dusky gloom. A physician among the summer sojourners, on a flying visit for a breath of mountain air, was the first man to reach the stage, and, with the terror-stricken Seymour, drew the long lithe body out and straightened it on the floor, as the curtain was lowered to hide the ghastly _mise en scène_ which it might be terror to women and children to remember. His ready hand desisted after a glance. The man had died from the first stroke of the bowie-knife, penetrating his side, and doubtless lacerating the outer tissues of the heart. The other strokes were registered,--the one on his hand, the other, a slight graze, on the neck. A tiny package had fallen on the floor as the hasty hands had torn the shirt aside from the wound: the deft professional fingers unfolded it,--a bit of faded flower, a wild purple verbena; the physician looked at it for a moment, and tossed it aside in the blood on the floor, uninterested. The pericardium was more in his line. He was realizing, too, that he could not start to-morrow, as he had intended, for his office and his rounds among his patients. The coroner’s jury was an obstinate impediment, and his would be expert testimony. Upon this inquest, held incongruously enough in the ballroom, the facts of the information which Owen Haines had brought to the juggler and the presence of the officers in the audience were elicited, and added to the excitements incident to the event. The friends of young Seymour, who was overwhelmed by the tragedy, believed and contended that since escape from prosecution for some crime was evidently impossible, the juggler had in effect committed suicide by holding up his left arm that the knife might pierce a vital part. Thus they sought to avert the sense of responsibility which a man must needs feel for so terrible a deed wrought, however inadvertently, by his own hand. But crime as a factor seemed doubtful. The sheriff, indeed, upon the representations of Sims, supplemented by the mystery of the lime-kiln which Knowles had disclosed, had induced the detective to accompany him to the mountains to seek to identify the stranger as a defaulting cashier from one of the cities for whose apprehension a goodly amount of money would be paid. But in no respect did Royce correspond to the perpetrator of any crime upon the detective’s list.