d expected--a short and dogged:

"I cannot explain."

It was my death warrant. I realised this even while I held Ella's eye
with mine and smoothed my countenance to meet the anguish in hers, in the
effort to hold her back for a few minutes longer till I could quite
satisfy myself that Arthur's case was really lost and that I must speak
or feel myself his murderer.

The gloom which followed this recognition of his inability, real or
fancied, to explain away the most damning feature of the case against
him, taken with his own contradictions and growing despondency, could not
escape my eye, accustomed as I was to the habitual expression of most
every person there. But it was not yet the impenetrable gloom presaging
conviction; and directing Ella's gaze towards Mr. Moffat, who seemed but
little disturbed either by Mr. Fox's satisfaction or the prisoner's open
despair, I took heart of grace and waited for the district attorney's
next move. It was a fatal one. I began to recognise this very soon,
simple as was the subject he now introduced.

"When you went into the kitchen, Mr. Cumberland, to get the stable-door
key, was the gas lit, or did you have to light it?"

"It--it was lit, I think."

"Don't you know?"

"It was lit, but turned low. I could see well enough."

"Why, then, didn't you take both keys?"

"Both keys?"

"You have said you went down town by the short cut through your
neighbour's yard. That cut is guarded by a door, which was locked that
night. You needed the key to that door more than the one to the stable.
Why didn't you take it?"

"I--I did."

"You haven't said so."

"I--I took it when I took the other."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes; they both hung on one nail. I grabbed them both at the same time."

"It does not appear so in your testimony. You mentioned a key, not keys,
in all your answers to my questions."

"There were two; I didn't weigh my words. I needed both and I took both."

"Which of the two hung foremost?"

"I didn't notice."

"You took both?"

"Yes, I took both."

"And went straight out with them?"

"Yes, to the stable."

"And then where?"

"Through the adjoining grounds downtown."

"You are sure you went through Mr. Fulton's grounds at this early hour in
the evening?"

"I am positive."

"Was it not at a later hour, much later, a little before eleven instead
of a little before nine?"

"No, sir. I was on the golf-links then."

"But some one drove into the stable