"Can she!" he reiterated. "Yes, she sings," he replied, emphatically. "Wait--you will hear her in a moment. Her voice is the most absolutely sympathetic I have ever listened to." Soon afterwards Miss Farnham went to the piano. She played her own accompaniment. One grand sweep her hands seemed to take of the instrument, as if they meant to embrace it, and then a voice, high, full, sweet, magnificent in its volume of melody, rose on the air and seemed to fill the room. Brabazon was right, Barbara Farnham could sing. As the words fell from her lips, there was no other sound in the listening room. I jotted those words down afterwards from memory--they seemed to me to be a fit prelude to the scene which was immediately to follow:-- Thou hast filled me a golden cup With a drink divine that glows, With the bloom that is flowing up From the heart of the folded rose. The grapes in their amber glow, And the strength of the blood-red wine, All mingle and change and flow In this golden cup of thine With the scent of the curling wine, With the balm of the rose's breath-- For the voice of love is thine, And thine is the Song of Death! The voice of the singer sank low as she approached the end of her song. The final words were in a minor key. I looked full at Miss Farnham, and her dark eyes met mine. They were full of apprehension. A kind of premonition of coming sorrow might well have filled her breast from the look in their depths. There was a noise and sense of confusion in the outer drawing-room. People stood back to make way for someone, and hurrying steps came quickly towards the piano. Miss Farnham sprang to her feet, the last notes of the song arrested on her lips. Carleton, an overcoat covering his evening dress, his hair dishevelled, his eyes wild, had come hastily to her side. "You will think that I have killed him, Barbara; but, before God, it is not true!" he said in a hoarse whisper--then he grasped my arm. "Come, I want you," he said, and he dragged me, as if he were a young fury, out of the room. "What, in the name of Heaven, is the matter?" I asked of him when we found ourselves in the hall. "Randall has fallen over the cliff down by Porran's field," he gasped. "I have found the--the body. Oh! no, no, what am I saying? Not the body yet--not a body when I left it--it breathed--it just breathed when I left. I tried to drag it up here, but it was too heavy. Come at once, for the love of Heaven." Other people had followed us out of the drawing-room. I encountered a glance of fire from Miss Farnham's dark eyes--her face was like death itself. Brabazon, in a tone full of authority, as befitted the host, began to speak. "Come!" he said. "Accident or no, there is not a moment to be lost in trying to help the poor fellow. You will lead us to the spot at once, Carleton. Come, Halifax; what a blessing that you happen to be on the spot!"