There was a final buzz and then the place became quiet, broken only by the ticking of a big round clock on the wall.

“We are gathered here—­ahem! to inquire into the mysterious deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Barry Langmore,” went on the coroner.

“That’s so—­an’ we want plain facts,” put in an old farmer, sitting well up front.

“Silence!” cried the coroner.  “We must have silence!”

“All right, Jack,” replied the farmer.  “I won’t say another word.”

“Silence.  We cannot go on if there is not silence.  Ahem! ahem!  Miss Langmore!”

Margaret arose and bowed slightly.  Then the coroner swore her in as a witness and told her to relate her story.  She could scarcely stand and Raymond brought her chair forward.

“You wish me to tell all I know?” she asked, in a faint but clear voice.

“Everything,” was Coroner Busby’s answer.

Pausing for a moment to collect her thoughts, she plunged into the recital, her tale being merely a repetition of that given to Adam Adams.  When she came to tell how her father had been found her voice broke and it was fully a minute before she could go on.  When she had finished the courtroom was as still as a tomb, save for the ticking of the clock, now sounding louder than ever.

“Is that all?” asked the coroner, after a painful pause.

“Yes, sir.”

“They say, Miss Langmore, that you were not on good terms with your stepmother.”

“Who says so?”

“It is an—­ahem! a common rumor.  What have you to say on that point?”

“It is true, sir,” answered Margaret, after another pause, during which the eyes of all in the courtroom were fixed upon the girl.

“It is said that you had violent quarrels,” pursued the coroner.

“No very violent quarrels.  Sometimes we did not speak to each other for days.”

“Then you admit that you did quarrel?”

“I do.”

“And you also quarreled with your father?”

“No, sir.”

“What, not at all?” queried Coroner Busby, elevating his eyes in surprise, either real or affected.

“We held different opinions upon certain questions, but we did not quarrel.”

“Hum!” The coroner mused for a moment.

“That is all for the present,” he added, and Margaret moved back to where she had been first sitting.

“I am glad that is over,” whispered Raymond.  “Can I do anything?  Get you some water?”

“No, nothing,” she answered, and dropped a veil over her face.

The next witness called was Mary Billings, the domestic employed at the Langmore mansion, and who had been about the place at the time of the tragedy.  She proved to be a round-faced Irish girl, not particularly bright, and now all but terror-stricken.  As soon as she was sworn in she burst into tears.

“Sure as there is a heavin above me, Oi didn’t do that murder, so Oi didn’t!” she moaned.