e, boy as
I was--I was only about eleven when he came here--associate with him in
the smallest degree. But during those two years he may very well have
noticed where the ladder was."

"Do you intend to say anything about all this tomorrow at the inquest,
Mark?"

"I don't think I shall do so," Mark said moodily. "I am certain of it
myself, but I don't think any man would convict him without stronger
evidence than I could give. However, that business in Australia will be
sufficient to hang him."

"I think you are right, Mark. Of course, if you do light upon any
evidence, we can bring this matter up in another court; if not, there
will be no occasion for you to appear in it at all, but leave it
altogether for the authorities to prove the Sydney case against him;
it will only be necessary for the constables who got up the other case
against him to prove his sentence, and for the reports of the Governor
of the jail to be read. There will be no getting over that, and he
will be hung as a matter of course. It will be a terrible thing for his
unhappy father."

"I do not think that he is likely to come to know it, sir; the shock of
the affair yesterday and that of this morning have completely prostrated
him, and Dr. Holloway, who was up with him before you arrived, thinks
that there is very little chance of his recovery."

When the magistrate had left, Mark sent a request to Mrs. Cunningham
that she would come down for a few minutes. She joined him in the
drawing room.

"Thank you for coming down," he said quietly. "I wanted to ask how you
were, and how Millicent is."

"She is terribly upset. You see, the Squire was the only father she had
ever known; and had he been really so he could not have been kinder. It
is a grievous loss to me also, after ten years of happiness here; but
I have had but little time to think of my own loss yet, I have been too
occupied in soothing the poor girl. How are you feeling yourself, Mark?"

"I don't understand myself," he said. "I don't think that anyone could
have loved his father better than I have done; but since I broke down
when I first went to my room I seem to have no inclination to give way
to sorrow. I feel frozen up; my voice does not sound to me as if it were
my own; I am able to discuss matters as calmly as if I were speaking of
a stranger. The one thing that I feel passionately anxious about is to
set out on the track of the assassin."

"There is nothing unusual in your st