t off, and looked better; he appeared before on the point
of fainting.

'I beg pardon, gentlemen--will you drink some wine?'

'I thank you, no, Sir. You'll be good enough to give me those keys' (to
the housekeeper).

'Give them--certainly,' said Dangerfield.

'Which of them opens the chest of drawers in your master's bed-chamber
facing the window?' He glanced at Dangerfield, and thought that he was
smiling wider, and his jaws looked hollower, as he repeated--

'If she does not know it, I'll be happy to show it you.'

With a surly nod, Mr. Lowe requited the prisoner's urbanity, and
followed Mrs. Jukes into her master's bed-chamber; there was an
old-fashioned oak chest of drawers facing the window.

'Where's Captain Cluffe?' enquired Lowe.

'He stopped at his lodgings, on the way,' answered the man; 'and said
he'd be after us in five minutes.'

'Well, be good enough, Madam, to show me the key of these drawers.'

So he opened the drawers in succession, beginning at the top, and
searching each carefully, running his fingers along the inner edges, and
holding the candle very close, and grunting his disappointment as he
closed and locked each in its order.

In the mean time, Doctor Toole was ushered into the little parlour,
where sat the disabled master of the Brass Castle. The fussy little
mediciner showed in his pale, stern countenance, a sense of the shocking
reverse and transformation which the great man of the village had
sustained.

'A rather odd situation you find me in, Doctor Toole,' said white Mr.
Dangerfield, in his usual harsh tones, but with a cold moisture shining
on his face; 'under _duresse_, Sir, in my own parlour, charged with
murdering a gentleman whom I have spent five hundred guineas to bring to
speech and life, and myself half murdered by a justice of the peace and
his discriminating followers, ha, ha, ha! I'm suffering a little pain,
Sir; will you be so good as to lend me your assistance?'

Toole proceeded to his task much more silently than was his wont, and
stealing, from time to time, a glance at his noticeable patient with the
wild gray eyes, as people peep curiously at what is terrible and
repulsive.

''Tis broken, of course,' said Dangerfield.

'Why, yes, Sir,' answered Toole; 'the upper arm--a bullet, Sir. H'm,
ha--yes; it lies only under the skin, Sir.'

And with a touch of the sharp steel it dropped into the doctor's
fingers, and lay on a bloody bit of lint on the table by t