“But I didn't see it, so I went back to the door and knocked. I knocked three times, and nobody came. Then I opened the door a crack, and hollered—‘Mr. Basset!’ says I, ‘Mr. Basset!’
“I called a number of times, then I got out of patience. I thought he'd gone away somewhere, and I might as well go in and see if I couldn't find my rope. So I opened the door wide and stepped in.
“It was awful still in there—somehow the stillness seemed to hit my ears. It was just like a tomb. That dreadful horror came over me again. I felt the cold stealing down my back. I made up my mind I'd just peek into the kitchen, and if I didn't see my rope, I wouldn't look any farther; I'd go home.
“So—the kitchen door was ajar, and I pushed it, and it swung open, and—I looked, and there—there!”
Suddenly the woman's shrill monologue was intensified by hysteria. She pointed wildly, as if she saw again the awful sight which she had seen through that open door.
“There, there!” she shrieked—“there! He was—there—oh—Willy—the doctor—Jerome Edwards—Willy—oh, there, there!” She caught her breath with choking sobs, she laughed, and the laugh ended in a wailing scream; she clutched her throat, she struggled, she was beside herself for the time, run off her track of reason by her panic-stricken nerves.
Two pale, chattering women, nearly as hysterical as she, led her, weeping shrilly all the way, into the house, and the crowd dispersed; some, whose curiosity was not yet satisfied, to seek the scene of the tragedy, some to return home with the news. Two men of the latter, walking along the village street, discussed the amount of the property left by the dead man. “It's as much as fifty thousand dollars,” said one.
“Every dollar of it,” assented the other.
“It ain't likely he's made a will. Who's goin' to heir it? He 'ain't got a relation that I know of. All the folks I ever heard of his havin', since I can remember, was his step-father an' his brother Sam, an' they died twenty odd years ago.”
“Adoniram Judd's father was Simon Basset's mother's cousin.”