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Conduct of Professor Chadd the bell, "is that, he has not gone mad from excitement."

The tall and angular figure of the eldest Miss Chadd blocked the doorway as the door opened. Two other Miss Chadds seemed in the same way to be blocking the narrow passage and the little parlor. There was a general sense of their keeping something from view. They seemed like three black-clad ladies in some strange play of Maeterlinek, veiling the catastrophe from the audience in the manner of the Greek chorus.

"Sit down, won't you?" said one of them, in a voice that was somewhat rigid with pain. "I think you had better be told first what, has happened."

Then, with her bleak face looking unmeaningly out of the window, she continued, in an even and mechanical voice:

"I had better state everything that occurred just as it occurred. This morning I was clearing away the breakfast things; my sisters were both somewhat, unwell, and had not come down. My brother had just gone out of the room, I believe, to fetch a book. 195