"Very well; now tell me how and when you first became acquainted
with the fact of Mr. Leavenworth's death."

But her replies to this question, while over-garrulous, contained
but little information; and seeing this, the coroner was on the point
of dismissing her, when the little juror, remembering an admission she
had made, of having seen Miss Eleanore Leavenworth coming out of the
library door a few minutes after Mr. Leavenworth's body had been
carried into the next room, asked if her mistress had anything in her
hand at the time.

"I don't know, sir. Faith!" she suddenly exclaimed, "I believe
she did have a piece of paper. I recollect, now, seeing her put it in
her pocket."

The next witness was Molly, the upstairs girl.

Molly O'Flanagan, as she called herself, was a rosy-cheeked,
black-haired, pert girl of about eighteen, who under ordinary
circumstances would have found herself able to answer, with a due
degree of smartness, any question which might have been addressed to
her. But fright will sometimes cower the stoutest heart, and Molly,
standing before the coroner at this juncture, presented anything but a
reckless appearance, her naturally rosy cheeks blanching at the first
word addressed to her, and her head falling forward on her breast in a
confusion too genuine to be dissembled and too transparent to be
misunderstood.

As her testimony related mostly to Hannah, and what she knew of her,
and her remarkable disappearance, I shall confine myself to a mere