case yourself, and so discover the means of unlocking the box?"

"No, Sir," said Harry, faintly; and once more she turned her eyes to
Richard. It was a true and tender glance, one would have said, and
accompanied by an attempt at a smile of encouragement. But if it had
been a glance of a gorgon, it could not have had a more appalling
effect; it literally seemed to turn him into stone.

[Illustration: "COME, DID THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN EVER GIVE YOU A KISS?"]

"Recollect yourself, Miss Trevethick," said Mr. Balais, earnestly; "you
are getting confused, I fear. Now please to give me your attention. You
say that you knew that the letters B, N, Z were those which formed the
key of the letter padlock, and yet that you did not open your father's
watch-case. How, then, did you become possessed of the secret?"

No answer. Harry caught her breath convulsively, and turned deadly pale.
She could never tell how Mrs. Yorke had endeavored to suborn her.

"Well, well, this is a matter of very little consequence--though I see
my learned friend is making a copious note of it," said Mr. Balais,
gayly. "The main point is what, as you have told us, did occur--that you
found out the secret somehow. When you got it, I suppose you opened the
box?"

No answer, save from Mr. Smoothbore, who observed, tartly: "You have no
right to assume that, Sergeant."

"Let the young woman have a glass of water," suggested the kindly judge.

"My lord, my lord!" cried Harry, with sudden passion, "he is not guilty.
Richard did not mean to steal the money; indeed he did not. He only
wished to get possession of it that my father might believe him to be a
man of wealth. He did but--"

"Endeavor to compose yourself, young woman," interposed the judge. "The
learned counsel will only ask what is necessary."

"Take your time. Miss Trevethick, take your time," pursued Mr. Balais,
in his blandest tones. "The question is, how the prisoner became
possessed of this money. Now, tell us, did you not give it him with your
own hands?"

The bell was still tolling in Richard's brain, and yet he could hear the
buzzing of a fly against a window of the court-house, and the careless
whistle of some lad in the street without. It was the same tune that the
keeper at Crompton had been wont to whistle in his leisure moments at
home; and his mind reverted with a flash to the glades of the stately
park, the herds of deer, the high-mossed gate, which he had shut in the
face of the