necting Mosk with the crime; and even on his seizure by warrant many
declined to believe in his guilt. Nevertheless, when the man was brought
before the magistrates, the evidence adduced against him by Baltic was
so strong and clear and irrefutable that, without a dissenting word from
the Bench, the prisoner was committed to stand his trial at the ensuing
assizes. Mosk made no defence; he did not even offer a remark; but,
accepting his fate with sullen apathy, sunk into a lethargic,
unobservant state, out of which nothing and no person could arouse him.
His brain appeared to have been stunned by the suddenness of his
calamity.

Many people expressed surprise that Bishop Pendle should have been
present when the man was arrested, and some blamed him for having even
gone to The Derby Winner. A disreputable pot-house, they whispered, was
not the neighbourhood in which a spiritual lord should be found. But Mrs
Pansey, for once on the side of right, soon put a stop to such talk by
informing one and all that the bishop had visited the hotel at her
request in order to satisfy himself that the reports and scandals about
it were true. That Mosk should have been arrested while Dr Pendle was
making his inquiries was a pure coincidence, and it was greatly to the
bishop's credit that he had helped to secure the murderer. In fact, Mrs
Pansey was not very sure but what he had taken the wretch in charge with
his own august hands.

And the bishop himself? He was glad that Mrs Pansey, to foster her own
vanity, had put this complexion on his visit to the hotel, as it did
away with any need of a true but uncomfortable explanation. Also he had
carried home with him the packet tossed on the table by Mosk, therefore,
so far as actual proof was concerned, his secret was still his own. But
the murderer knew it, for not only were the certificate and letters in
the bundle, but there was also a sheet of memoranda set down by Krant,
_alias_ Jentham, which proved clearly that the so-called Mrs Pendle was
really his wife.

'If I destroy these papers,' thought the bishop, 'all immediate evidence
likely to reveal the truth will be done away with. But Mosk knows that
Amy is not my wife; that my marriage is illegal, that my children are
nameless; out of revenge for my share in his arrest, he may tell someone
the story and reveal the name of the church wherein Amy was married to
Krant. Then the register there will disclose my secret to anyone curious
en