"The next thing I remember, was finding myself lying on the floor, and, when I tried to get up, seeing everything in the room swinging about me like the swinging boats at a fair. I don't know how long I had been unconscious, but when, at last, I managed to stand up, and clinging, faint and giddy, to the back of a chair, looked again at the motionless figure that sprawled across the writing-table, there was a great pool of blood on the polished oak of the floor beneath it, which grew slowly broader, as drop after drop dripped down to swell it With a great effort I conquered my faintness, and staggered out of the room and down the long passage.

"In the billiard-room Mr. McConachan was still practising his game. He must have been making a break, for I remember hearing him speak, as I opened the door. 'Twenty-seven,' he said aloud. My voice wouldn't come, and I stood holding on to the doorpost, while he, with his back to me, went on potting the red.

"'That you, Miss Byrne?' he said, without looking round. Then, as I didn't answer, he glanced up and saw by my face, I suppose, that something was very wrong. He came quickly to me, his cue in his hand. 'What's the matter?' he said. 'Do you feel ill?' 'Lord Ashiel is dead,' I said; 'in the library. Some one shot him. Didn't you hear?' 'Dead?' he cried; 'Uncle Douglas shot! Do you know what you're saying! I heard a shot, it is true, five minutes ago, but surely that was the keeper shooting an owl or something.'