ike a
lion. "I am wholly cured of deafness, and my memory is as acute as my
hearing."

Calvin Van de Lear turned pale to the roots of his dry, yellow whiskers.

"Devil!" he muttered.

"My testimony covers only a single point," resumed the strong, direct,
and imposing witness. "I saw the face of this prisoner for the first
time since his babyhood in his father's house not many weeks ago. It
resembled his father's youthful countenance, as I knew it, so greatly
that I really believed his parent haunted the streets of Kensington,
according to the rumor. The supposed apparition drove me to investigate
the mysterious death of William Zane. I believed that Agnes knew the
story, but was under this prisoner's command of secrecy. Seeking an
assistant, the witness, Donovan, forced himself upon me. In a short time
I was confounded by the contradictions of his behavior. Looking deeper
into it, I suspected that in his suit of clothing resided at different
times two men: the one an agent, the other a principal; the one a
reality, the other a disguise. I armed myself and had the duller and
less observant of these doubles row me out upon the Delaware on such a
night as marked the tragedy he witnessed. When we reached the middle of
the river I forced the story of the coincidence from him by reasoning
and threats."

"Ha! ha!" exclaimed Calvin Van de Lear. "Is this an Arkansas snake
story?"

"The young Zane had gratified a wilful passion to penetrate the
residence of his father, and look at its inmates and the situation from
safe harborage there. He found that Donovan in his roving sailor's life
had played the crippled sea beggar in the streets of British cities,
tying up his natural leg and fitting a wooden leg to the knee--a trick
well known to British ballad singers. That leg was in Donovan's
sea-chest, as it had been left in this city, and also the crutch
necessary to walk with it. Mr. Zane and Donovan had exchanged the leg
and crutch, and the former matched his fellow with a wig and patches.
Thus convertible, they had for a little while deceived everybody, but
for further convenience Mr. Zane ensconced himself as a tenant in a
neighboring house, and when the apparatus was in request by Donovan, he
crossed on the roofs between the trap-doors, and still was master of his
residence."

"What does all this disclose but the intrigue of despairing guilt?"
exclaimed young Van de Lear. "He had destroyed the purity of a lady and
abando