As I did not wish to attract attention to myself, I took off my shoes.

I went through the lower rooms, and then I came upstairs.

It was some time before I reached the--the room where a fire had been lit; but when I did I knew--not," I hastily corrected, as I caught his quick concentrated glance, "what had happened or whom I should find there, but that this was the spot where the intruder had been, possibly was now, and I determined to grapple with him.

What--what have I said ?" I asked in anguish, as I caught a look on the coroner's face of irrepressible repulsion and disgust, slight and soon gone but unmistakable so long as it lasted.
"Nothing," he replied, "go on." But his tone, considerate as it had been from the first, did not deceive me.

I knew that I had been detected in some slip or prevarication.