es, sir, crossing the links."

"But the storm came from the west. It should have beaten against
your back."

"Back or front, it bothered me. I could not get on as fast as I wished."

Mr. Fox cast a look at the jury. Did they remember the testimony of the
landlord that Mr. Cumberland's coat was as thickly plastered with snow on
the front as it had been on the back. He seemed to gather that they did,
for he went on at once to say:

"You are accustomed to the links? You have crossed them often?"

"Yes, I play golf there all summer."

"I'm not alluding to the times when you play. I mean to ask whether or
not you had ever before crossed them directly to Cuthbert Road?"

"Yes, I had."

"In a storm?"

"No, not in a storm."

"How long did it take you that time to reach Cuthbert Road from The
Whispering Pines?"

Mr. Moffat bounded to his feet, but the prisoner had answered before he
could speak.

"Just fifteen minutes."

"How came you to know the time so exactly?"

"Because that day I did look at my watch. I had an engagement in
the lower town, and had only twenty minutes in which to keep it. I
was on time."

Honest at the core. This boy was growing rapidly in my favour. But this
frank but unwise answer was not pleasing to his counsel, who would have
advised, no doubt, a more general and less precise reply. However, it
had been made and Moffat was not a man to cry over spilled milk. He did
not even wince when the district attorney proceeded to elicit from the
prisoner that he was a good walker, not afraid in the least of
snow-storms and had often walked, in the teeth of the gale twice that
distance in less than half an hour. Now, as the storm that night had
been at his back, and he was in a hurry to reach his destination, it
was evidently incumbent upon him to explain how he had managed to use
up the intervening time of forty minutes before entering the hotel at
half-past eleven.

"Did you stop in the midst of the storm to take a drink?" asked the
district attorney.

As the testimony of the landlord in Cuthbert Road had been explicit as
to the fact of his having himself uncorked the bottle which the prisoner
had brought into the hotel, Arthur could not plead yes. He must say no,
and he did.

"I drank nothing; I was too busy thinking. I was so busy thinking I
wandered all over those links."

"In the blinding snow?"

"Yes, in the snow. What did I care for the snow? I did not understand my
sister being