This was the picture which Frank was destined to see in his dreams for many and many a night, until the mystery was solved concerning the woman whom they carried to the sleigh, which was driven to the park house, where, within fifteen or twenty minutes, a crowd of anxious, curious people gathered. The messenger sent to town had done his work rapidly and thoroughly, and half the villagers who heard of the tragedy enacted at their very doors, started at once for Tracy Park. The boy had stopped at the station and told his story there, making the baggage-master feel as if he, too, were a murderer, or at least an accessory.
"If I had only gone after that woman," he said, as he told of the stranger who had come on the train and gotten off on the side of the car farthest from the depot--"if I had gone after her and made her take a conveyance to where she was going, this would not have happened; but it was so all-fired cold, and the wind was yelling so, and she walked off so fast, as if she knew her own business. So I just minded mine, or rather I didn't, for I never even see the box, or trunk, which was pitched out helter-skelter, and which I found this morning, all covered up with snow. It is hers, of course, and I shall send it right over there, as it may tell who the poor critter was."
This trunk, which was little more than a strong wooden box, with two double locks upon it, was still further secured by a bit of rope wound twice around it, and tied in a hard knot. There was nothing upon it to tell whose it was, or whence it came, except the name of a German steamer, on which its owner had probably crossed the ocean, and the significant word "Hold," showing that it had not been used in the state-room. It had been checked at the Grand Central depot in New York for Shannondale, and the check was still attached to the iron handle when it was put down in the kitchen at Tracy Park, where the utmost excitement prevailed, the servants huddling together with scared faces, and talking in whispers of the terrible thing which had happened, while Mrs. Tracy and the housekeeper, scarcely less excited than the servants, gave their attention to the dead.
At the end of the rear hall was a small room, where Frank sometimes received business calls when at home, and there they laid the body, after the physician, who had arrived, declared that life had been extinct for many hours.