imitate so eminently large-hearted
a style by conceding also that the story told by Curate Percy about
the canoe, the weir, and the young wife seems to be substantially true.
Apparently Smith did marry a young woman he had nearly run down in a boat;
it only remains to be considered whether it would not have been
kinder of him to have murdered her instead of marrying her.
In confirmation of this fact I can now con-cede to the defence
an unquestionable record of such a marriage."

So saying, he handed across to Michael a cutting from the
"Maidenhead Gazette" which distinctly recorded the marriage
of the daughter of a "coach," a tutor well known in the place,
to Mr. Innocent Smith, late of Brakespeare College, Cambridge.

When Dr. Pym resumed it was realized that his face had grown
at once both tragic and triumphant.

"I pause upon this pre-liminary fact," he said seriously,
"because this fact alone would give us the victory,
were we aspiring after victory and not after truth.
As far as the personal and domestic problem holds us,
that problem is solved. Dr. Warner and I entered this house at
an instant of highly emotional diff'culty. England's Warner has
entered many houses to save human kind from sickness; this time
he entered to save an innocent lady from a walking pestilence.
Smith was just about to carry away a young girl from this house;
his cab and bag were at the very door. He had told her she was
going to await the marriage license at the house of his aunt.
That aunt," continued Cyrus Pym, his face darkening grandly--"that
visionary aunt had been the dancing will-o'-the-wisp
who had led many a high-souled maiden to her doom.
Into how many virginal ears has he whispered that holy word?
When he said `aunt' there glowed about her all the merriment
and high morality of the Anglo-Saxon home. Kettles began to hum,
pussy cats to purr, in that very wild cab that was being
driven to destruction."

Inglewood looked up, to find, to his astonishment (as many another
denizen of the eastern hemisphere has found), that the American was
not only perfectly serious, but was really eloquent and affecting--
when the difference of the hemispheres was adjusted.

"It is therefore atrociously evident that the man Smith has at
least represented himself to one innocent female of this house
as an eligible bachelor, being, in fact, a married man. I agree with
my colleague, Mr. Gould, that no other crime could approximate to this.