this room, I came upon two additional facts equally odd and
irreconcilable.

One was the presence of a penknife with the file blade open, on a
small table under the window marked by the loosened shutter.
Scattered about it were some filings which shone as the light from
my lantern fell upon them, but which were so fine as to call for a
magnifying-glass to make them out. The other was in connection with
a closet not far from the great bed. It was an empty closet so far
as the hooks went and the two great drawers which I found standing
half open at its back; but in the middle of the floor lay an
overturned candelabrum similar to the one below, but with its prisms
scattered and its one candle crushed and battered out of all shape
on the blackened boards. If upset while alight, the foot which had
stamped upon it in a wild endeavor to put out the flames had been a
frenzied one. Now, by whom had this frenzy been shown, and when?
Within the hour? I could detect no smell of smoke. At some former
time, then? say on the day of the bridal?

Glancing from the broken candle at my feet to the one giving its last
sputter in the tumbler on the dressing table, I owned myself perplexed.

Surely, no ordinary explanation fitted these extraordinary and
seemingly contradictory circumstances.




IV