as himself had a right to a suitable and
well-considered reply.

The butler, impressed perhaps by his manner, glanced uneasily around.
"Yes, sir, so far as I know."

"The young ladies were attached to their uncle?"

"O yes, sir."

"And to each other?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so; it's not for me to say."

"You suppose so. Have you any reason to think otherwise?" And he doubled
the watch-chain about his fingers as if he would double its attention as
well as his own.

Thomas hesitated a moment. But just as his interlocutor was about to
repeat his question, he drew himself up into a rather stiff and formal
attitude and replied:

"Well, sir, no."

The juryman, for all his self-assertion, seemed to respect the reticence
of a servant who declined to give his opinion in regard to such a
matter, and drawing complacently back, signified with a wave of his hand
that he had no more to say.

Immediately the excitable little man, before mentioned, slipped forward
to the edge of his chair and asked, this time without hesitation: "At
what time did you unfasten the house this morning?"

"About six, sir."

"Now, could any one leave the house after that time without your
knowledge?"

Thomas glanced a trifle uneasily at his' fellow-servants, but answered
up promptly and as if without reserve;

"I don't think it would be possible for anybody to leave this house
after six in the morning without either myself or the cook's knowing of
it. Folks don't jump from second-story windows in broad daylight, and as
to leaving by the doors, the front door closes with such a slam all the
house can hear it from top to bottom, and as for the back-door, no one
that goes out of that can get clear of the yard without going by the
kitchen window, and no one can go by our kitchen window without the
cook's a-seeing of them, that I can just swear to." And he cast a
half-quizzing, half-malicious look at the round, red-faced individual
in question, strongly suggestive of late and unforgotten bickerings over
the kitchen coffee-urn and castor.

This reply, which was of a nature calculated to deepen the forebodings
which had already settled upon the minds of those present, produced a
visible effect. The house found locked, and no one seen to leave it!
Evidently, then, we had not far to look for the assassin.

Shifting on his chair with increased fervor, if I may so speak, the
juryman glanced sharply around. But perceiving the renewed interest
in