o startle him up a bit. Then I went
on.

"From what you have been stating up to the present time," says I, "I
gather that you are in a scrape which is likely to interfere seriously
with your marriage on Wednesday?"

(He nodded, and I cut in again before he could say a word):

"The scrape affects your young lady, and goes back to the period of a
transaction in which her late father was engaged, doesn't it?"

(He nods, and I cut in once more):

"There is a party, who turned up after seeing the announcement of your
marriage in the paper, who is cognizant of what he oughtn't to know, and
who is prepared to use his knowledge of the same to the prejudice of the
young lady and of your marriage, unless he receives a sum of money to
quiet him? Very well. Now, first of all, Mr. Frank, state what you have
been told by the young lady herself about the transaction of her late
father. How did you first come to have any knowledge of it?"

"She was talking to me about her father one day so tenderly and
prettily, that she quite excited my interest about him," begins Mr.
Frank; "and I asked her, among other things, what had occasioned his
death. She said she believed it was distress of mind in the first
instance; and added that this distress was connected with a shocking
secret, which she and her mother had kept from everybody, but which she
could not keep from me, because she was determined to begin her married
life by having no secrets from her husband." Here Mr. Frank began to
get sentimental again, and I pulled him up short once more with the
paper-knife.

"She told me," Mr. Frank went on, "that the great mistake of her
father's life was his selling out of the army and taking to the wine
trade. He had no talent for business; things went wrong with him from
the first. His clerk, it was strongly suspected, cheated him--"

"Stop a bit," says I. "What was that suspected clerk's name?"

"Davager," says he.

"Davager," says I, making a note of it. "Go on, Mr. Frank."

"His affairs got more and more entangled," says Mr. Frank; "he was
pressed for money in all directions; bankruptcy, and consequent dishonor
(as he considered it) stared him in the face. His mind was so affected
by his troubles that both his wife and daughter, toward the last,
considered him to be hardly responsible for his own acts. In this state
of desperation and misery, he--" Here Mr. Frank began to hesitate.

We have two ways in the law of drawing evidence o