in Abertaff now who won't
interfere--old Morgan.'

'Do you know, I thought he was trying to press the case rather in my
brief. This accounts for it. But what sort of a man is this Lewis?'

'Oh, a big, coarse-looking fellow. Came back from Australia just
before it happened. A brute! He's egging on the Crown. She left him
all her money--about twenty thousand--but the jewels are supposed to
be worth nearly as much more, and he's lost them, and so he's savage.'

'I say, George, I don't know that I ought to say it, but has it
occurred to you as at all curious that he should have returned the
very night it was done?'

A gleam of furtive joy crossed the other's face, and instantly
vanished again.

_'Has that struck you_?' he said, and seemed about to add something
more. But he restrained himself, and merely added: 'The less you and
I talk about it the better, perhaps. Coming out?'

And they left the chambers together.

But though Tressamer ceased to discuss the subject with his friend, he
could not dismiss it from his mind. The sparkling wit, the wild,
extravagant humour, for which he had been famous, seemed to have
withered up in the furnace of his terrible grief. He lunched with
Prescott in almost dead silence, and as soon as it was over got up
hurriedly and disappeared.

He had truthfully described himself as having been deep in the
case from its commencement. When the news of what had happened
at Porthstone reached the town of Abertaff he was walking in the
High Street alone. He saw the unusual excitement, and meeting an
acquaintance, learned from him that Miss Lewis had been murdered.

'And they say it was done by her companion, a girl named Owen,' added
the man.

Tressamer turned white, gasped for breath, and cried out loudly:

'It's a lie! I swear she is innocent!'

In another moment he had darted off to a cab-stand, and was on his way
to the station.

There he had one of those sickening waits for a train which are
inevitable on such occasions. Twice he was on the point of ordering a
special, but each time he restrained himself by the thought that by
the time it was ready the ordinary train would be nearly due. He
shunned the gloomy waiting-room, and strode up and down the narrow
platform with swift, excited strides.

The porters and newspaper-boys stared as he rushed to and fro, hardly
heeding the piles of luggage with which railway servants seek to break
the dull monotony of a platform promenade. Th