seen the whole thing happen, we could not have been closer
than we were in our conclusion as to how it all came about. Well, the
news that it is Markham who shot Mr. Faulkner does not surprise me, for,
as you know, I have already a warrant out against him on the charge. I
fear that there is little chance that we shall lay hands on him now, for
he will doubtless learn from some of his associates here of the evidence
given at the coroner's inquest, and that your brother has been proved
altogether innocent of the crime. I can understand that, believing, as
he did, the evidence against Mr. Wyatt to be overwhelming, he had no
great objection to his giving his name; for, as the matter then stood,
your brother's story would only have been regarded as the attempt of a
guilty man to fix the blame of his crime on another. As it has turned
out, the letter is a piece of important evidence that might be produced
against Markham, for all the statements in it tally with the facts we
have discovered for ourselves. Still I congratulate you most heartily. I
certainly thought that your brother had been murdered, though our
efforts to find any traces of the crime have failed altogether. I am
afraid, as he says, it will be a long time before he manages to get
away; still, that is a comparatively unimportant matter, and all that I
can hope is that this fellow Markham will come to a speedy end. Of
course you will show this letter to everyone, for now that nobody
believes for a moment that your brother was Mr. Faulkner's murderer,
everyone will be glad to hear that the mystery is cleared up, and that
he is simply in France instead of being, as all supposed, buried in some
hole where his body would never be discovered.

"All that can possibly be said against him now is that he behaved
rashly in following a desperate man instead of coming back to us for
assistance; but I quite see that, under the circumstance of his
relations with the magistrate, he was doubly anxious to bring the
latter's murderer to justice, and, as we now know, the latter would
certainly have got away unsuspected had your brother not acted as he
did."

Colonel Chambers was equally pleased when Frank called upon him the next
morning, and begged him, after showing the letter to his friends, to
hand it over to him for safe keeping, as, in the event of Markham ever
being arrested, it would be valuable, if not as evidence, as affording
assistance to the prosecution.

"Do you th