rescription that will bring you through
yet--London advice, you know. I've great faith in the consulting
surgeon at the Home Office.'

By the help of that smile and augury, the Doctor got away, terribly
beaten down, but living on his fragment of hope; though obliged to
perceive that every one who merely saw the newspaper report in black
and white, without coming into personal contact with the prisoner,
could not understand how the slightest question of the justice of the
verdict could arise. Even Mr. Wilmot was so convinced by the papers,
that the Doctor almost repented of the mission to which he had invited
him, and would, if he could, have revoked what had been said. But the
vicar of Stoneborough, painful as was the duty, felt his post to be by
the side of his unhappy young parishioner, equally whether the gaol
chaplain or Dr. May were right, and if he had to bring him to
confession, or to strengthen him to 'endure grief, suffering
wrongfully.'

And after the first interview, no more doubts on that score were
expressed; but the vicar's tone of pitying reverence in speaking of the
prisoner was like that of his friends in the High Street.

Tom May spared neither time nor pains in beating up for signatures for
the petition, but he had a more defined hope, namely, that of detecting
something that might throw the suspicion into the right quarter. The
least contradiction of the evidence might raise a doubt that would save
Leonard's life, and bring the true criminal in peril of the fate he so
richly deserved. The Vintry Mill was the lion of the neighbourhood,
and the crowds of visitors had been a reason for its new master's
vacating it, and going into lodgings in Whitford; so that Tom, when he
found it convenient to forget his contempt of the gazers and curiosity
hunters who thronged there, and to march off on a secret expedition of
investigation, found no obstacle in his way, and at the cost of a fee
to Mrs. Giles, who was making a fortune, was free to roam and search
wherever he pleased. Even his careful examination of the cotton blind,
and his scraping of the window-sill with a knife, were not remarked;
for had not the great chair been hacked into fragmentary relics, and
the loose paper of the walls of Leonard's room been made mincemeat of,
as memorials of 'the murderer, Ward'?

One long white hair picked out of a mat below the window, and these
scrapings of the window-sill, Tom carried off, and also the scraping