y large enough. This, together with the bundles, dissipated a
suspicion which had been growing in Johnson's mind, and he roughly
exclaimed, "You need not look so scared, farmer; it's not you: that's
quite clear."

To this remark neither Armstrong nor his wife answered a syllable, but
continued to gaze at the corpse, the bundles, and the broken locks, in
bewildered terror and astonishment. Presently some one asked if any body
had seen Mrs. Strugnell?

The question roused Armstrong, and he said, "She is not come home: her
door is locked."

"How do you know that?" cried the constable, turning sharply round, and
looking keenly in his face. "How do you know that?"

"Because--because," stammered Armstrong, "because she always locks it
when she goes out."

"Which is her room?"

"The next to this."

They hastened out, and found the next door was fast.

"Are you there, Mrs. Strugnell?" shouted Johnson.

There was no reply.

"She is never home till half-past ten o'clock on Sunday evenings,"
remarked Armstrong in a calmer voice.

"The key is in the lock on the inside," cried a young man who had been
striving to peep through the key-hole.

Armstrong, it was afterwards sworn, started as if he had been shot;
and his wife again clutched his arm with the same nervous, frenzied
gripe as before.

"Mrs. Strugnell, are you there?" once more shouted the constable. He was
answered by a low moan. In an instant the frail door was burst in, and
Mrs. Strugnell was soon pulled out, apparently more dead than alive, from
underneath the bedstead, where she, in speechless consternation, lay
partially concealed. Placing her in a chair, they soon succeeded--much
more easily, indeed, than they anticipated--in restoring her to
consciousness.

Nervously she glanced round the circle of eager faces that environed her,
till her eyes fell upon Armstrong and his wife, when she gave a loud
shriek, and muttering, "They, _they_ are the murderers!" swooned, or
appeared to do so, again instantly.

The accused persons, in spite of their frenzied protestations of
innocence, were instantly seized and taken off to a place of security;
Mrs. Strugnell was conveyed to a neighbor's close by; the house was
carefully secured; and the agitated and wondering villagers departed to
their several homes, but not, I fancy, to sleep any more for that night.

The deposition made by Mrs. Strugnell at the inquest on the body was in
substance as follows:--

"On t