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 suddenly, "The Coroner told us that . . . they had left some things in the room."

The little woman asked them in, and then began suddenly to cry. "I've never had such a thing happen to me before . . . and now I'm ruined!"

McTavish bade her be quiet, but she went on and on hysterically. In all the tragedy, she could, it seemed, see only her own misfortune.

"You can tell me about it when we're upstairs," said McTavish, patting her arm with the air of a bachelor unused to the sight of a woman's tears, and upset by them. "Mr. Downes will wait down here."

Then Philip spoke suddenly for the first time. "No . . . I'm going with you. I want to hear the whole thing. I've . . . I've got to know."

There was a smell of cabbage and onions in the hallway. As McTavish closed the door, the whole place was lost in gloomy shadows. The tired woman, still sobbing, and blowing her nose on the soiled apron, said, "It's upstairs."

They followed her up two flights of stairs to a room at the back. It was in complete darkness, as if the two bodies were still there, and as she raised the window-shade there came into view a whole vista of dreary backyards littered with rubbish and filled with lines of newly washed clothing. The gray light revealed a small room, scarcely a dozen feet square, with a cheap pine table, a wash-bowl, pitcher and slop-jar, two chairs and a narrow iron bed. On the walls hung a bad print of the Sermon on the Mount and a cheaply illuminated text, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden." The bed was untouched, save for