"Some fatal accident has happened to her on those rocks." The girl's altered looks, and words, and actions--the numbed, deadened way in which she listened to me, and spoke to me--when I had found her sweeping the corridor but a few hours since, rose up in my mind, and warned me, even as the Sergeant spoke, that his guess was wide of the dreadful truth.

I tried to tell him of the fear that had frozen me up.

I tried to say, "The death she has died, Sergeant, was a death of her own seeking." No! the words wouldn't come.

The dumb trembling held me in its grip.

I couldn't feel the driving rain.