ten o'clock
At 10 P.M. she was seen and identified by a person who had met her at ` Elm Bluff ' , crouching behind a tree near the road that led to that ill-fated house , and when questioned regarding her presence there , gave unsatisfactory answers . At half-past two o'clock she was next seen hastening toward the station office , along the line of the railroad , from the direction of the water tank , which is situated nearly a mile north of town . Meanwhile an unusually severe storm had been followed by a drenching rain , and the stranger 's garments were wet , when , after a confused and contradictory account of her movements , she boarded the 3.05 train bound north . `` During that night , certainly after ten o'clock , Gen ' l Darrington was murdered . His vault was forced open , money was stolen , and most significant of all , the WILL was abstracted . Criminal jurisprudence holds that the absence of motive renders nugatory much weighty testimony . In this melancholy cause , could a more powerful motive be imagined than that which goaded the prisoner to dip her fair hands in her grandfather 's blood , in order to possess and destroy that will , which stood as an everlasting barrier between her and the estate she coveted ?