d with a ready answer. "I just wanted to
see where the Spelbanks were buried--quite a lot of them, I see."

"Southeast corner of Paradise," said Campany. "Several tombs. I could
have spared you the trouble of looking."

"You're a regular encyclopaedia about the place," laughed Bryce. "I
suppose you know every spout and gargoyle!"

"Ought to," answered the librarian. "I've been fed on it, man and boy,
for five-and-forty years."

Bryce made some fitting remark and went out and home to his rooms--there
to spend most of the ensuing evening in trying to puzzle out the various
mysteries of the day. He got no more light on them then, and he was
still exercising his brains on them when he went to the inquest next
morning--to find the Coroner's court packed to the doors with an
assemblage of townsfolk just as curious as he was. And as he sat
there, listening to the preliminaries, and to the evidence of the first
witnesses, his active and scheming mind figured to itself, not without
much cynical amusement, how a word or two from his lips would go far
to solve matters. He thought of what he might tell--if he told all the
truth. He thought of what he might get out of Ransford if he, Bryce,
were Coroner, or solicitor, and had Ransford in that witness-box.
He would ask him on his oath if he knew that dead man--if he had had
dealings with him in times past--if he had met and spoken to him on that
eventful morning--he would ask him, point-blank, if it was not his hand
that had thrown him to his death. But Bryce had no intention of making
any revelations just then--as for himself he was going to tell just as
much as he pleased and no more. And so he sat and heard--and knew from
what he heard that everybody there was in a hopeless fog, and that in
all that crowd there was but one man who had any real suspicion of the
truth, and that that man was himself.

The evidence given in the first stages of the inquiry was all known to
Bryce, and to most people in the court, already. Mr. Dellingham told
how he had met the dead man in the train, journeying from London to
Wrychester. Mrs. Partingley told how he had arrived at the Mitre,
registered in her book as Mr. John Braden, and had next morning asked if
he could get a conveyance for Saxonsteade in the afternoon, as he
wished to see the Duke. Mr. Folliot testified to having seen him in the
Cathedral, going towards one of the stairways leading to the gallery.
Varner--most important witness of