"Now, did you see her standing there?"

"No."

"Yet you turned round?"

"I did?"

"Miss Dare says so."

The prisoner struck his forehead with his hand.

"And it _is_ so," he cried. "I remember now that some vague desire to
know the time made me turn to look at the church clock. Go on. Tell me
more that Miss Dare saw."

His manner was so changed--his eye burned so brightly--the detective
gave himself a tap of decided self-gratulation.

"She saw you hurry over the bog, stop at the entrance of the wood, take
a look at your watch, and plunge with renewed speed into the forest."

"It is so. It is so. And, to have seen that, she must have had the aid
of a telescope."

"Then she describes your appearance. She says you had your pants turned
up at the ankles, and carried your coat on your left arm."

"_Left_ arm?"

"Yes."

"I think I had it on my right."

"It was on the arm toward her, she declares. If she was in the
observatory, it was your left side that she saw."

"Yes, yes; but the coat was over the other arm. I remember using my left
hand in vaulting over the fence when I came up to the house."

"It is a vital point," said Mr. Gryce, with a quietness that concealed
his real anxiety and chagrin. "If the coat was on the arm _toward_ her,
the fact of its being on the right----"

"Wait!" exclaimed Mr. Mansell, with an air of sudden relief. "I
recollect now that I changed it from one arm to the other after I
vaulted the fence. It was just at the moment I turned to come back to
the side door, and, as she does not pretend to have seen me till after I
left the door, of course the coat was, as she says, on my left arm."

"I thought you could explain it," returned Mr. Gryce, with an air of
easy confidence. "But what do you mean when you say that you changed it
at the moment you turned to come back to the side door? Didn't you go at
once to the dining-room door from the swamp?"

"No. I had gone to the front door on my former visit, and was going to
it this time; but when I got to the corner of the house I saw the tramp
coming into the gate, and not wishing to encounter any one, turned round
and came back to the dining-room door."

"I see. And it was then you heard----"

"What I heard," completed the prisoner, grimly.

"Mr. Mansell," said the other, "are you not sufficiently convinced by
this time that Miss Dare was not with Mrs. Clemmens, but in the
observatory of Professor Darling's house, to tell me what