been informed that
the culprit was the son of his great client, Lord Birkenhead.

Barton picked up the cigarette-case, and as he, for the first time,
examined its interior, some broken glass fell out and tinkled on the
floor.

CHAPTER XVI.--The Verdict of Fate.

Maitland did not dally long in the Levant after getting Barton's letter.
He was soon in a position to receive, in turn, the congratulations which
he offered to Margaret and Barton with unaffected delight.

Mrs. St. John Deloraine and he understood each other!

Maitland, for perhaps the first time in his life, was happy in a
thoroughly human old-fashioned way.

Meanwhile the preparations for Cranley's trial dragged on. Interest, as
usual, was frittered away in examinations before the magistrates.

But at last the day of judgment shone into a court crowded as courts are
when it is the agony of a gentleman that the public has to view.

When the prisoner, uttering his last and latest falsehood, proclaimed
himself "Not Guilty," his voice was clear and strong enough, though the
pallor of his face attested, not only the anxiety of his situation, but
the ill-health which, during his confinement, had often made it doubtful
whether he could survive to plead at the bar of any earthly judgment.

The Counsel for the Crown, opening the case, stated the theory of the
prosecution, the case against Cranley. His argument is here offered in a
condensed form:

First, Counsel explained the position of Johnson, or Shields, as the
unconscious heir of great wealth, and set forth his early and late
relations with the prisoner, a dishonored and unscrupulous outcast
of society. The prisoner had been intimately acquainted with the
circumstances of Johnson's early life, with his history and his
home. His plan, therefore, was to kill him, and then personate him. A
celebrated case, which would be present to the minds of the jury, proved
that a most plausible attempt at the personation of a long-missing
man might be made by an uneducated impostor, who possessed none of the
minute local and personal knowledge of the prisoner. Now, to personate
Johnson, a sailor whose body was known to have been indelibly marked
by the tattooing of various barbarous races, it was necessary that the
prisoner should be similarly tattooed. It would be shown that, with
unusual heartlessness, he had persuaded his victim to reproduce on his
body the distinctive marks of Johnson, and then had destroye