“No. I’ve been looking about. I went down the path to the pine grove and round the house but I didn’t see a soul.” “Why, who could it be?” said Anne. “Aren’t we all”--she looked over the standing figures--“No, we’re not all here. Who’s outside?” “Mrs. Stokes is.” Shine spoke up. “I saw her walking along the ocean bluffs as I came up from the Point.” “Sybil is, too,” Mrs. Cornell added. “She went out just a few minutes ago. I saw her from my window.” “It can’t be either of them.” Bassett’s vexation had given place to a sudden uneasiness. “I don’t understand. Nobody could have come over from the mainland with the tide up. I’ll go out there----” A sound from outside stopped him. It was a cry in a woman’s voice, close by. “What’s that?” some one said, and before an answer could come, the cry rose again--a high wailing scream carrying words: “Sybil! Sybil! Sybil’s dead--Sybil’s killed!” A clamorous mingling of voices rose from the group, combined in a single up-swelling note of horror. The men rushed for the entrance and met Flora Stokes. She burst in between them, white as the ghost of Cæsar, with her opened mouth a dark cavity. “Sybil’s murdered--dead--shot.” Each word was projected in a screaming gasp. Bassett shouted at her, “Where?” And she waved an arm toward the channel. “There--from the Point. She’s gone--she’s dead! She went over into the water. On the top of the cliff. She’s murdered--dead--murdered!” As if she were dead, too, and of no more consequence, they fled past her--a line of people streaming out into the serene evening that held a hideous catastrophe. Only Anne stayed, her face as if overlaid by a coating of white paint. She went to Flora and seized her by the arm. “Who was it?” she whispered. “Who did it?” The woman looked at her at first as if not knowing who she was. Then jerking her arm free, clasped her hands against the sides of her head and went across the room staring upward and crying out: “I don’t know. I didn’t see---- It’s God’s truth, I don’t know.” Anne ran out after the others. VII THE moon had risen and hung on the edge of the sky like a great disk of white paper. Anne saw the others running this way and that along the edge of the Point. A boat was pushing out from the dock, Stokes in it, and, caught by the current, it shot down the gleaming surface of the channel. There were cries in men’s voices and Stokes’ answer, bell-clear from the water. Then Shine ran by her, back to the house, grim-visaged with staring eyes. The scene had the fantastic quality of a nightmare, the solemn splendors of the setting and the gesticulating, shouting figures darting about like grotesque silhouettes.