y upon me,--only
spare my life, and I will confess all! I didn't mean to harm him!
I didn't mean to hurt a hair of his head. Only have mercy upon
me, and let me go!"

The chairman rose in his place, pale and agitated. "Good heavens!"
he exclaimed, "what horrible mystery is this? What does it mean?"

"As sure as there is a God in heaven," said Jonathan Jelf, "it means
that murder has been done."

"No--no--no!" shrieked Raikes, still upon his knees, and cowering
like a beaten hound. "Not murder! No jury that ever sat could bring
it in murder. I thought I had only stunned him--I never meant to
do more than stun him! Manslaughter--manslaughter--not murder!"

Overcome by the horror of this unexpected revelation, the chairman
covered his face with his hand, and for a moment or two remained
silent.

"Miserable man," he said at length, "you have betrayed yourself."

"You bade me confess! You urged me to throw myself upon the mercy
of the board!"

"You have confessed to a crime which no one suspected you of having
committed," replied the chairman, "and which this board has no
power either to punish or forgive. All that I can do for you is to
advise you to submit to the law, to plead guilty, and to conceal
nothing. When did you do this deed?"

The guilty man rose to his feet, and leaned heavily against the
table. His answer came reluctantly, like the speech of one dreaming.

"On the twenty-second of September!"

On the twenty-second of September! I looked in Jonathan Jelf's
face, and he in mine. I felt my own paling with a strange sense
of wonder and dread. I saw his blanch suddenly, even to the lips.

"Merciful heaven!" he whispered, "_what was it, then, that you saw
in the train?_"

What was it that I saw in the train? That question remains unanswered
to this day. I have never been able to reply to it. I only know that
it bore the living likeness of the murdered man, whose body had
then been lying some ten weeks under a rough pile of branches, and
brambles, and rotting leaves, at the bottom of a deserted chalk-pit
about half-way between Blackwater and Mallingford. I know that it
spoke, and moved, and looked as that man spoke, and moved, and
looked in life; that I heard, or seemed to hear, things related
which I could never otherwise have learned; that I was guided, as
it were, by that vision on the platform to the identification of
the murderer; and that, a passive instrument myself, I was destined,
by means