d refused the services of Messrs. Pollard and
other gentlemen of the neighbourhood.

Meanwhile Tressamer was enabled to go about with less publicity and to
pursue his inquiries. Eleanor was disposed to wonder at him for not
employing a detective. But he soon explained that.

'I know detectives,' he said to her. 'I have seen them in the
witness-box and out of it. They are admirable men in their own groove.
Give them an ordinary crime--a robbery or a forgery--and they can
grapple with it. They will track the defaulting cashier to America for
you, or run down the absconding broker in the depths of the Australian
Bush. But there their usefulness ends. They are no good in the face of
a real mystery like this. This is not a question of clever detection;
it is a case of reading the human heart and penetrating its motives. A
genius could help us, but I know of no genius in Scotland Yard. No, I
will do what I can; and if I come to anything in the way of ordinary
detective work I will send for Sergeant Wright.'

So he continued to work alone. He had by this time seen and talked
with every witness whose name appeared in the brief for the Crown. He
had been present, with the air of a casual spectator, at the inquest,
and afterwards at the inquiry before the magistrates, which ended in
the committal of Eleanor to the assizes to take her trial for wilful
murder.

He did not tell Eleanor much as to the results of his inquiries. He
would simply mention that he had been talking to Simons, or that he
had had a game of billiards with John Lewis, and she had to form her
own idea of what had passed between them.

Finally, he went up to London and plunged into that minute study of
Hale and Hawkins which had awakened the surprise of his friend
Prescott. He was thus kept occupied till both he and his friend were
summoned down from town by the approach of the assizes.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ASSIZES.

On a certain day in the month of July our lady the Queen, probably
clad in ermine, and wearing on her head that gorgeous specimen of the
jeweller's art which, when not in use, may be viewed at the Tower of
London for the absurdly moderate sum of sixpence--our lady the Queen,
I say, was reminded by her faithful Chancellor that various prisoners
were awaiting trial in different parts of England and Wales, and among
other places in Mynyddshire.

Whereupon her Majesty, with that constant attention to the welfare of
her people which befit