object in the room stood out clear as by daylight. The lightning could almost be tasted in the air, the thunder seemed to paralyse the brain and crash upon the beating heart of the nervous listener. At last came the rain and hail beating on the house, rebounding from the sidewalk, tearing, breaking, wrecking everything not strong enough to resist its onslaught. It was a long-remembered storm and one whose fury was renewed over and over during the night, when weary humanity had thought it nearly past. This tempest seemed to have within it the power to discharge its waters and electric force, again and again, and the lull between each onslaught was hardly long enough for the weary watchers to pass into unconsciousnes.

It must have been during a respite in the storm that Jack at last dozed off into a troubled sleep from which he was suddenly aroused by a cry, so blood-curdling and awful, that he was on his feet and groping for the door even before he was fully awake. He stood in the corridor and listened. It seemed to him that, at the moment his door opened, the light over the transom of the opposite room went out. Still, it might have been but a flash of lightning. He listened! Surely he heard a choking sob or groan from that same room. In a moment he had tried the door and, finding that it was not

locked, he pushed it open. As he stepped into the room, a flash of lightning almost blinded him, but by its gleam he had the impression that he saw a dark figure pass out of the window on to the piazza roof. Then the quick succession of darkness blotted everything out, and with the next flash he saw only the fluttering of the white curtains. He groped in the direction of the bureau in the hope of finding the electric fixture. Another flash revealed it and he was relieved to turn on the light, dim as it was, for somehow an uncanny horror had crept into his very soul since he had crossed that threshold. As he turned to inspect the room, he could distinguish a figure lying on the bed, though the whole apartment was gloomy and the light very insufficient. He could see that it was a man, still clothed, who had evidently cast himself there without troubling to remove even his shoes or coat. As he looked closer, he called himself a fool for his pains. This was evidently his tipsy acquaintance of the evening before. He had come to bed too drunk to undress, and had probably had a nightmare, as he well might after his much imbibing. That nightmare would account for his horror-filled cry. Just as he was about to turn out the light again, the figure on the bed shuddered and a long-drawn breath

rattled in his throat. Jack sprang to his side and then saw for the first time that the face was ashy, the eyes glazed, and, O God, the horror of it! a great pool of blood was spreading over the white sheet. He tried to loosen the shirt collar and, in doing so, felt something hard beneath his hand. It was the handle of a knife that had been plunged into the victim's breast. As he bent lower to look at it, he caught his breath in a cry of horror. He must be dreaming! Surely he knew that knife! It was one of curious workmanship. There could not be two alike. He felt confident he knew it. He had used it for years. He could not be mistaken. Yes, it was his Tyrolean hunting-knife-Muriel's gift that he had pawned one snowy winter day in a far-off city. Dazed, bewildered, overcome with the ghastly scene, he straightened himself and turned to give the alarm. Two men were standing in the doorway looking at him.

"What's this?" cried one.

"I fear it is murder.

And then he stag

"Murder," he whispered, and found that his voice had almost left him. Get a doctor, call for help!" gered to a chair and collapsed. As he put his hand to his head to steady the whirling vertigo that unmanned him, he realised that his hands were

wet and sticky. Looking at them, he recoiled and a wave of sickness almost overpowered him. They were stained with blood.

One of the men had stayed with him; the other was arousing the house, calling a doctor, summoning the police, and it was bewildering how swiftly that summons was answered. Men crowded into the room and filled it to suffocation. The doctor, who was also the coroner, had to fight his way through, and the police who followed him had a stern struggle before they could dispose of the morbid, gaping throng. All this time Jack had sat motionless, sick and faint from the discovery he had made. He heard the coroner ask who found the body-so he was dead, poor wretch! He answered that he was the first to find it, and he found himself speaking in the same hoarse whisper, as if his throat were paralysed. He noted that the two men who had been with him in the discovery answered simultaneously, "We did," and he wondered that anyone should care to claim precedence in such a ghastly find. The coroner, he noticed, addressed all his questions to them and seemed to ignore Jack, by whose side stood one of the officers solemnly surveying the scene. Then a whispered conversation that Jack could not overhear took place between the coro

ner and the officers at the bedside.

He did not

seem to be of any use there no one asked information of him-and as he had never felt a morbid curiosity in the horrible, he rose to leave. He had taken only half a dozen steps toward the door when the coroner turned and halted him. "Not so fast, young man, I guess we want you here."

"All right," said Jack, relieved to find that, with motion, his voice had returned. "I thought you did not care to question me. I cannot tell much, but I guess I was the first on the scene.

"I guess you were," said the officer, stepping to his side, "but you had better not do much talking. You will have time enough for that by-and-bye."

"What's your meaning?" asked Jack, innocently. "I'll tell you all I know now. It is my only chance. I have to catch the five-o'clock train and I see it is nearly daylight." This was greeted with a silence that grew ominous as the men exchanged significant glances. Then the coroner spoke slowly and deliberately and his tone rang with official importance:

"Young man, you are under arrest on suspicion of this murder. You were caught red-handed. If you can clear yourself, which does not look