something strange about this room. He wasn't cruel to me, was he?"

"Oh! no, miss," Jane answered promptly. "He wasn't never what you
might call exactly cruel. He was a very good father, and looked
after you well; but he was sort of stern and moody-like--would have
his own way, and didn't pay no attention to fads and fancies, he
called 'em. When you were little, many's the time he sent you up
here for punishment--disobedience and such like."

I took out the photograph and tried, as it were, to think of my
father as alive and with his eyes open. I couldn't remember the
eyes. Jane told me they were blue; but I think what she said was the
sort of impression the face produced upon me. A man not unjust or
harsh in his dealings with myself, but very strong and masterful. A
man who would have his own way in spite of anybody. A father who
ruled his daughter as a vessel of his making, to be done as he would
with, and be moulded to his fashion.

Still, my visit to The Grange resulted in the end in casting very
little light upon the problem before me. It pained and distressed me
greatly, but it brought no new elements of the case into view: at
best, it only familiarised me with the scene of action of the
tragedy. The presence of the alcove was the one fresh feature.
Nothing recalled to me as yet in any way the murderer's features. I
racked my brain in vain; no fresh image came up in it. I could
recollect nothing about the man or his antecedents.

I almost began to doubt that I would ever succeed in reconstructing
my past, when even the sight of the home in which I had spent my
childish days suggested so few new thoughts or ideas to me.