slowly, with a pale, stern face. He would rather have
lost his power of speech, than have used it for her detriment. But he
was known to have been present at the death of Rosa Blondelle, and he
was therefore subpoenaed to attend the trial as a witness for the
prosecution.

Being duly sworn, he testified that he had been startled by loud screams
from the room below his chamber; and that on rushing down into that
room, he had found Mrs. Rosa Blondelle bleeding from a wound in her
chest, and supported in the arms of Mr. Lyon Berners, who was in the act
of bearing her across the room to the sofa, on which he then laid her.

"Was there any one else in the room?" inquired the prosecuting attorney,
seeing that the witness had paused.

"Mrs. Berners was there."

"Describe her appearance."

"She was very much agitated, as was quite natural."

"Had she anything in her hand?".

"Yes," answered Clement Pendleton, who never added a word against Sybil
that he could honestly keep back.

"Witness, you are here to tell the _whole_ truth, without reservation.
What was it that the prisoner held in her hand?"

"A dagger--the dagger," added poor Clement Pendleton recklessly; "with
which the unknown assassin had killed Mrs. Blondelle."

"Stay, stay! we are going a little too fast here. Are you prepared to
swear that you know, of your own knowledge, that some person other than
the prisoner at the bar 'killed Mrs. Blondelle?'"

Captain Pendleton was a soldier and no lawyer, yet he saw at once how
his faith in Sybil's innocence had led him to the false step of stating
inferences for facts. So he explained:

"I spoke in accordance with my own firm convictions."

"Ah, but I fancy your own conviction will not prevent that of the
prisoner," commented the State's Attorney, with a grim humor.

"And now, Captain Pendleton," he continued, "as you are sworn to tell
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I must trouble
you to answer the questions here put to you, by stating exactly such
facts as came under your personal observation only."

And then he resumed the examination of the witness, and drew from him a
relation of all the fatal circumstances that occurred in the library at
Black Hall, on the night of the tragedy, among them the guilty
appearance of Sybil Berners with the reeking dagger in her crimsoned
hand, and the dying declaration of the murdered woman, charging Sybil
Berners with her death.

He would have g