she could have died," persisted the witness,
calmly, "unless she opened the door to some burglar. And what burglar
would kill a woman in that way, when he could pound her with his fists?
No; she was frenzied and stabbed herself in desperation; or the thing
was done by accident, God knows how! And as for the testimony of the
experts--we all know how easily the wisest of them can be mistaken even
in matters of as serious import as these. _If all the experts in the
world_"--here his voice rose and his nostrils dilated till his aspect
was actually commanding and impressed us all like a sudden
transformation--"_If all the experts in the world were to swear that
those shelves were thrown upon her after she had lain therefor four
hours dead, I would not believe them. Appearances or no appearances,
blood or no blood, I here declare that she pulled that cabinet over in
her death-struggle; and upon the truth of this fact I am ready to rest
my honor as a man and my integrity as her husband_."

An uproar immediately followed, amid which could be heard cries of "He
lies!" "He's a fool!" The attitude taken by the witness was so
unexpected that the most callous person present could not fail to be
affected by it. But curiosity is as potent a passion as surprise, and in
a few minutes all was still again and everybody intent to hear how the
Coroner would answer these asseverations.

"I have heard of a blind man denying the existence of light," said that
gentleman, "but never before of a sensible being like yourself urging
the most untenable theories in face of such evidence as has been brought
before us during this inquiry. If your wife committed suicide, or if the
entrance of the point of a hat-pin into her spine was effected by
accident, how comes the head of the pin to have been found so many feet
away from her and in such a place as the parlor register?"

"It may have flown there when it broke, or, what is much more probable,
been kicked there by some of the many people who passed in and out of
the room between the time of her death and that of its discovery."

"But the register was found closed," urged the Coroner. "Was it not, Mr.
Gryce?"

That person thus appealed to, rose for an instant.

"It was," said he, and deliberately sat down again.

The face of the witness, which had been singularly free from expression
since his last vehement outbreak, clouded over for an instant and his
eye fell as if he felt himself engaged in a