o heavy blows,
given, I should say, the first from behind, the second as Dr Chartley
was turning round. As you surmised, Mr Chartley, the skull is
fractured, and there is a severe pressure upon the brain. And the other
case?"

The surgeon was led into the next room, where a long and careful
examination was made.

"No, Mr Chartley, no firearms here; the man has been poisoned."

"Poisoned!" cried Hendon Chartley, turning to the table, and taking up
one of the glasses to raise it to his nose, and then touch the liquid in
the bottom with the tip of his finger and taste it. "Brandy," he said,
"only pure brandy."

He set it down, and took up the second glass, which he smelt.

"Ha! there's something here," he cried; and dipping his finger again, he
tasted it, and spat quickly two or three times, before passing the glass
to the surgeon, who contented himself with raising it to his nostrils.

"Yes; Mr Chartley; no doubt about that," he said. "How did all this
come about?"

He turned to the young student, who looked at the sergeant, and the
sergeant at John Whyley, while the latter stared stolidly at the
surgeon.

"That's what we're going to see, sir," said Whyley.

"Quite right, my man, quite right. Now, Mr Chartley, I can do no more
here. I should like to have in a colleague in consultation over your
father's case. Nothing more can be done now. We will be here quite
early."

He gave a few directions as he passed through the consulting-room, and
then son and daughter were left to their painful vigil, and the thick
fog covered all as with a funeral pall.

CHAPTER TWO.

GOING BACKWARDS.

Breakfast-time in the dull dining-room, with its sombre old furniture,
carpet dotted with holes worn by the legs of chairs, and the
drab-painted panelled walls, made cheerful by a set of engravings in
tarnished gilt, fly-pecked frames of the princes of the blood royal:
H.R.H. the Prince Regent, with his brothers the Dukes of York, Clarence,
Kent, Cumberland, Sussex, and Cambridge, each with a little square
tasselled pillow at the top of the frame, and, reposing thereon, a very
shabby coronet; while the two windows, with their faded curtains, looked
across a row of rusty spikes at a prospect composed of a gaunt old
house, evidently let in lodgings.

Richmond Chartley, looking as charming as a handsome girl will look, in
spite of a line of care upon her her head and a twitch of anxiety upon
the corners of her lips, wa