d you, bending over him, were horrified to
find that he was dead; or, rather, that he seemed to be.

"Exactly how he came to life I do not know, but it must have been while
you were in the midst of your terror, and beginning to wonder what you
would do with the body."

"How do you know all this?" asked the doctor, faintly.

"It is simply the only explanation of all the facts. The witness Klein
heard the quarrel and the blow. That blow did not fall upon you, and
there was nobody else present but Patrick Deever.

"Now, then, he suddenly came to himself. He sprang up. You were amazed.
You advanced toward him.

"Believing that you intended to renew the attack, he ran away. He scaled
the garden wall, and fled through the little grove toward the river."

"You are reading my mind," exclaimed the doctor, whose amazement acted
as a restorative.

"No, I am not. How else could he have got out? On one side was Klein, on
the other St. Nicholas avenue, with many people who would have seen him.
He escaped toward the river."

"Then you didn't kill him, after all?" asked the superintendent.

"Of the remainder of that fatal affair," said Dr. Jarvis, "I have only
one explanation to give, and that will seem miraculous.

"His body was found buried in the garden. I was seen to bury it. I was
seen carrying it there by night.

"But upon my soul, I did not know that I did it. The evidence has
convinced me, that is all.

"And this is the explanation: Patrick Deever, after escaping from the
grove, must have fallen and died. I must have gone there in my sleep,
have found the body, and brought it back to the garden.

"My habit of sleep-walking is well known. I have done things which, from
a scientific point of view, were far more marvelous than this."

"Nonsense!" cried Deever; "you were wide enough awake. Superintendent
Byrnes will not swallow that story."

"Is it any more wonderful," said Nick, "than what I saw the doctor do in
his laboratory?"

The story of that night he had already told to Deever and the
superintendent.

"Very little, if any," said Byrnes.

"I passed that night, or supposed that I passed it, at my home," said
the doctor. "I took an opiate, and seemed to sleep. But I had dreams of
murder and the hiding of dead bodies. I must have walked. It was fate."

"But the wounds upon the body? How about them?" asked Byrnes.

"They must have been made while he was pounding the body down into the
earth," said Deever,