Wait till I help him up." He was gone before the Curator could utter a word, only to reappear in a few minutes with a man in his wake whom the former at first blush thought to be as much past the age where experience makes for efficiency as the other seemed to be short of it.
But this impression, if impression it were, was of short duration.

No sooner had this physically weak but extremely wise old man entered upon the scene than his mental power became evident to every person there.
Timorous hearts regained their composure, and the Curator--who in his ten years of service had never felt the burden of his position so acutely as in the last ten minutes--showed his relief by a volubility quite unnatural to him under ordinary conditions.

As he conducted the detectives across the court, he talked not of the victim, as might reasonably be expected, but of the woman who had been found leaning over her with her hand on the arrow.
"We think her some escaped lunatic," he remarked.

"Only a demented woman would act as she does.

First she denied all knowledge of the girl.