“What do you mean?” inquired Caroline.

“Nothing,” replied Rebecca.

Nobody entered the study that day, nor the next.  The third day Henry was expected home, but he did not arrive and the last train from the city had come.

“I call it pretty queer work,” said Mrs. Brigham.  “The idea of a doctor leaving his patients at such a time as this, and the idea of a consultation lasting three days!  There is no sense in it, and now he has not come.  I don’t understand it, for my part.”

“I don’t either,” said Rebecca.

They were all in the south parlor.  There was no light in the study; the door was ajar.

Presently Mrs. Brigham rose—­she could not have told why; something seemed to impel her—­some will outside her own.  She went out of the room, again wrapping her rustling skirts round that she might pass noiselessly, and began pushing at the swollen door of the study.

“She has not got any lamp,” said Rebecca in a shaking voice.

Caroline, who was writing letters, rose again, took the only remaining lamp in the room, and followed her sister.  Rebecca had risen, but she stood trembling, not venturing to follow.

The doorbell rang, but the others did not hear it; it was on the south door on the other side of the house from the study.  Rebecca, after hesitating until the bell rang the second time, went to the door; she remembered that the servant was out.

Caroline and her sister Emma entered the study.  Caroline set the lamp on the table.  They looked at the wall, and there were two shadows.  The sisters stood clutching each other, staring at the awful things on the wall.  Then Rebecca came in, staggering, with a telegram in her hand.  “Here is—­a telegram,” she gasped.  “Henry is—­dead.”

The Messenger

BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

    Little gray messenger,
    Robed like painted Death,
    Your robe is dust. 
    Whom do you seek
    Among lilies and closed buds
      At dusk?

Among lilies and closed buds
At dusk,
Whom do you seek,
Little gray messenger,
Robed in the awful panoply
Of painted Death? 
R.W.C.

From The Mystery of Choice, by Robert W. Chambers.  Published,
1897, by D. Appleton and Company.  Copyright by Robert W. Chambers. 
By permission of Robert W. Chambers.

All-wise,
Hast thou seen all there is to see with thy two eyes? 
Dost thou know all there is to know, and so,
Omniscient,
Darest thou still to say thy brother lies? 
R.W.C.

I

“The bullet entered here,” said Max Fortin, and he placed his middle finger over a smooth hole exactly in the center of the forehead.

I sat down upon a mound of dry seaweed and unslung my fowling piece.

The little chemist cautiously felt the edges of the shot-hole, first with his middle finger, and then with his thumb.