Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/106

 and answer between the coroner and the witness, was overcome by a wave of sympathy for the pale man, thus led to the most terrible point in his narrative.

"Did you meet any one on the way?"

"No one."

"Or see any one at a distance?"

"I noticed no one."

"Were you absorbed in your own thoughts?"

"Perhaps."

"Could any one have passed at some distance with out your attention being aroused?"

"Possibly. I don t know."

"What did you first observe on reaching the knoll where the Tower stands?"

"When I saw that my wife wasn't on the seat where I left her, I noticed rather to my surprise that the door of the Tower stood a little way open. I thought that she might be in the room—that she'd found the door unlocked, and gone in."

"You didn't think she had unlocked it?"

"I didn't think of that, at the moment."

"What did you see when you went in?"

Sir Ian' s nostrils quivered. He tightened his lips, as if to keep them from quivering too. Then, for the first time he bowed his head, and told the story of what he had seen, with a voice that broke more than once. He told what he had seen, and what he had done; how he had run down to the home farm of