d him with
fiendish ingenuity, in the very act of assuming his personality. The
very instrument, it might be said, which stamped Cranley as Johnson,
slew Johnson himself, and the process which hallmarked the prisoner
as the heir of vast wealth stigmatized him with the brand of Cain.
The personal marks which seemed to establish the claimant's case
demonstrated his guilt He was detected by the medical expert brought in
to prove his identity, and was recognized by that gentleman, Dr. Barton,
who would be called, and who had once already exposed him in a
grave social offence--cheating at cards. The same witness had made a
_post-mortem_ examination of the body of Richard Johnson, and had then
suspected the method by which he had been murdered.

The murder itself, according to the theory of the prosecution, was
committed in the following manner: Cranley, disguised as a sailor
(tbe disguise in which he was finally taken), had been in the habit of
meeting Johnson, and being tattooed by him, in a private room of the
_Hit or Miss_ tavern, in Chelsea. On the night of February 7th, he met
him there for the last time. He left the tavern late, at nearly twelve
o'clock, telling the landlady that "his friend," as he called Johnson,
had fallen asleep upstairs. On closing the establishment, the landlady,
Mrs. Gullick, found the room, an upper one, with dormer windows opening
on the roof, empty. She concluded that Johnson--or Shields, as she
called him--had wakened, and left the house by the back staircase, which
led to a side-alley. This way Johnson, who knew the house well, often
took, on leaving. On the following afternoon, however, the dead body of
Johnson, with no obvious marks of violence on it, was found in a cart
belonging to the vestry--a cart which, during the night, had remained
near a shed on the piece of waste ground adjoining the _Hit or Miss_. A
coroner's jury had taken the view that Johnson, being intoxicated, had
strayed into the piece of waste ground (it would be proved that the door
in the palisade surrounding it was open on that night), had lain down
in the cart, and died in his sleep of cold and exposure. But
evidence derived from a later medical examination would establish
the presumption, which would be confirmed by the testimony of an
eye-witness, that death had been wilfully caused by Cranley, employing a
poison which it would be shown he had in his possession--a poison which
was not swallowed by the victim, but i