he
wine-glasses. Toole applied his sticking-plaster, and extemporised a set
of splints, and had the terrified cook at his elbow tearing up one of
her master's shirts into strips for bandages; and so went on neatly and
rapidly with his shifty task.

In the mean time, Cluffe had arrived. He was a little bit huffed and
grand at being nailed as an evidence, upon a few words carelessly, or,
if you will, confidentially dropped at his own mess-table, where Lowe
chanced to be a guest; and certainly with no suspicion that his little
story could in any way be made to elucidate the mystery of Sturk's
murder. He would not have minded, perhaps, so much, had it not been that
it brought to light and memory again the confounded ducking sustained by
him and Puddock, and which, as an officer and a very fine fellow, he
could not but be conscious was altogether an undignified reminiscence.

'Yes, the drawers were there, he supposed; those were the very ones; he
stooped but little; it must have been the top one, or the next to it.
The thing was about as long as a drumstick, like a piece of whip handle,
with a spring in it; it bent this way and that, as he dried it in the
towel, and at the butt it was ribbed round and round with metal
rings--devilish heavy.'

So they examined the drawers again, took everything out of them, and
Captain Cluffe, not thinking it a soldier-like occupation, tacitly
declined being present at it, and, turning on his heel, stalked out of
the room.

'What's become of it, Ma'am?' said Lowe, suddenly and sternly, turning
upon Mrs. Jukes, and fixing his eyes on hers. There was no guilty
knowledge there.

'He never had any such thing that I know of,' she answered stoutly; 'and
nothing could be hid from me in these drawers, Sir; for I had the key,
except when it lay in the lock, and it must ha' been his horsewhip; it
has some rings like of leather round it, and he used to lay it on these
drawers.'

Cluffe was, perhaps, a little bit stupid, and Lowe knew it; but it was
the weakness of that good magistrate to discover in a witness for the
crown many mental and moral attributes which he would have failed to
recognise in him had he appeared for the prisoner.

'And where's that whip, now?' demanded Lowe.

'By the hall-door, with his riding-coat, Sir,' answered the bewildered
housekeeper.

'Go on, if you please, Ma'am, and let me see it.'

So to the hall they went, and there, lying across the pegs from which
Mr. Da