She picked her way to the pavement, where something lay huddled
against the wall of the house, and the coachman, torpid on his box
behind the fidgety horses, started at her sharp exclamation.

"Come here!" she called to him. "Bring me one of the lamps. Here is a
horrible thing. Be quick!"

He was nervous about leaving his horses, but Truda's tone was
compelling. With gruntings and ponderously he obeyed, and the
carriage-lamp shed its light over the matter in hand. Under the wall,
with one clutching hand outspread as though to grip at the stones of
the pavement, lay the body of a woman, her face upturned and vacant.
And by it, still crying, crouched a child, whose hands were closed on
the woman's disordered dress. Truda, startled to stillness, stood for
a space of moments staring; the unconscious face on the ground seemed
to look up to her with a manner of challenge, and the child,
surprised by the light, paused in its weeping and cowered closer to
the body.

"Murder?" said Truda hoarsely. It was a question, and the coachman
shuffled uneasily.

"I think," he stammered, while the lamp swayed in his gauntleted hand
and its light traveled about them in wild curves--"I think, your
Excellency, it is a Jew."

"A Jew!" Truda stared at him. "Yes." He bent to look closer at the
dead woman, puffing with the exertion. "Yes," he repeated, "a Jew.
That is all, your Excellency."