To make sure, I went upstairs to his bedroom. Pray observe that all this time I had not connected these things with crime. It is true I had a faint suspicion that there might possibly be some foul play, but as there was nothing to confirm such a belief I abandoned the idea. I declare that when I knocked at the door of Briarfield's room I had no more idea of the horrid truth than a babe unborn. My premonitions pointed to mystery, but not to murder. Yet from the conversation of the previous night I might have guessed what had happened. The house was as accursed as the palace of the Artidæ and Ate bided on the threshold stone. Not until I had thrice knocked without receiving any answer did my suspicions begin to form. Then they took shape in an instant. I tried the door. It was locked. The ominous silence still hinted at unspeakable horrors. My knocking echoed jarringly through the stillness. At that moment there flashed before my eyes the picture of two figures flying across a red horizon against which blackened the beams of a gallows. It was the shadow of the future. I knocked, I called his name, and finally in desperation at the continued silence set my shoulder against the crazy door. It yielded with a tearing sound, and I entered the room amid a cloud of fine dust. He was lying on the bed stiff and cold. I had no need to call, to touch his shoulder, to place my hand on his heart. He was dead! With the clothes drawn up smoothly to his chin lay the man with whom I had conversed the previous night. The right arm lay outside the counterpane. On the hand glistened a pearl ring. I looked at that bauble, I glanced at the waxen face. The matter was beyond all doubt. Francis Briarfield was dead. Before I could further examine the body or the room I was forced to run for my brandy flask. For the moment I was deadly sick, and it needed a long draft of the fiery spirit to speed the stagnating blood through my veins. The strange circumstance was a sufficient apology for such qualmishness. This lonely inn set on a hand breadth of living ground amid quaking bogs, this dead body of what had once been a friend, this solitude by which I found myself environed, these were sufficient to shake the strongest nerve. It looks in a manner prosaic on black and white, but think of the horror of the actual experience! For the moment I could formulate no ideas on the subject. That my friend should be dead was sufficient to stun me. When reason came back I asked myself how he died and who was responsible for the crime. The landlord, the maid, the brother--one of these three had murdered Francis Briarfield. But in what way?