ad been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, from a
quarter after eight o'clock to a quarter before ten. While he was there,
my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and had exchanged
Good Night with a farm-laborer going home. The man could not be more
particular as to the time at which he saw her (he got into dense
confusion when he tried to be), than that it must have been before nine.
When Joe went home at five minutes before ten, he found her struck down
on the floor, and promptly called in assistance. The fire had not then
burnt unusually low, nor was the snuff of the candle very long; the
candle, however, had been blown out.

Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house. Neither, beyond
the blowing out of the candle,--which stood on a table between the door
and my sister, and was behind her when she stood facing the fire and was
struck,--was there any disarrangement of the kitchen, excepting such
as she herself had made, in falling and bleeding. But, there was one
remarkable piece of evidence on the spot. She had been struck with
something blunt and heavy, on the head and spine; after the blows were
dealt, something heavy had been thrown down at her with considerable
violence, as she lay on her face. And on the ground beside her, when Joe
picked her up, was a convict's leg-iron which had been filed asunder.

Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith's eye, declared it to have
been filed asunder some time ago. The hue and cry going off to the
Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, Joe's opinion
was corroborated. They did not undertake to say when it had left the
prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once belonged; but they claimed
to know for certain that that particular manacle had not been worn by
either of the two convicts who had escaped last night. Further, one of
those two was already retaken, and had not freed himself of his iron.

Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here. I believed
the iron to be my convict's iron,--the iron I had seen and heard him
filing at, on the marshes,--but my mind did not accuse him of having put
it to its latest use. For I believed one of two other persons to have
become possessed of it, and to have turned it to this cruel account.
Either Orlick, or the strange man who had shown me the file.

Now, as to Orlick; he had gone to town exactly as he told us when we
picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen abou