Yet the dead woman's countenance must have been healthy enough in life, although her hands were rough and hard, showing that she had been doing manual labor.
Armida had been a particularly good housemaid, a black-haired, black-eyed Tuscan, quick, cleanly, and full of a keen sense of humor.

It was a great shock to me to find her lying there dead.

The breast of her dress was stained with dried blood, which, on examination, I found had issued from a deep and fatal wound beneath the ear where she had been struck an unerring blow that had severed the artery.
"Those men--those men who buried her! I wonder who they were ?" my companion exclaimed in a hushed voice.

"We must follow them and ascertain.

They are certainly the murderers who have returned in secret and concealed the evidence of this second crime." "Yes," I said.