to
strangulation and not to the poison she took?"

"That was what I swore to, and what I should have to swear to again if
you placed me back on the stand. The poison, taken with her great
excitement, robbed her of consciousness, but there was too little of it,
or it was too old and weakened to cause death. She would probably have
revived, in time; possibly did revive. But the clutch of those fingers
was fatal; she could not survive it. It costs me more than you can ever
understand to say this, but questions like yours must be answered. I
should not be an honest man otherwise."

Sweetwater made a movement. Mr. Fox turned and looked at him critically.

"Speak out," said he.

But Sweetwater had nothing to say.

Neither had Dr. Perry. The oppression of an unsolved problem, involving
lives of whose value each formed a different estimate, was upon them all;
possibly heaviest upon the district attorney, the most serious portion of
whose work lay still before him.

To the relief of all, Carmel was physically stronger than we expected
when she came to retake the stand in the afternoon. But she had lost a
little of her courage. Her expectation of clearing her brother at a word
had left her, and with it the excitation of hope. Yet she made a noble
picture as she sat there, meeting, without a blush, but with an air of
sweet humility impossible to describe, the curious, all-devouring glances
of the multitude, some of them anxious to repeat the experience of the
morning; some of them new to the court, to her, and the cause for which
she stood.

Mr. Fox kept nobody waiting. With a gentleness such as he seldom showed
to any witness for the defence, he resumed his cross-examination by
propounding the following question:

"Miss Cumberland, in your account of the final interview you had with
your sister, you alluded to a story you had once read together. Will you
tell us the name of this story?"

"It was called 'A Legend of Francis the First.' It was not a novel, but a
little tale she found in some old magazine. It had a great effect upon
us; I have never forgotten it."

"Can you relate this tale to us in a few words?"

"I will try. It was very simple; it merely told how a young girl marred
her beauty to escape the attentions of the great king, and what respect
he always showed her after that, even calling her sister."

Was the thrill in her voice or in my own heart, or in the
story--emphasised as it was by her undeniable