ed it?' I asked. 'No,' says Bogue; 'to be sure he
wasn't.' 'Why, then, you thickhead,' says I, 'he must have left
while you were talking with the prisoner; and since you heard him go,
the odds are the prisoner heard him, too.' That's the way to get at
evidence, Lydia."

"My dear Jack," said Miss Belcher, "you're an Argus!"

"Well, I flatter myself it was pretty neat," resumed Mr. Rogers,
speaking with his mouth full; "but, as it happens, we don't need it.
For when, as I've told you, we drove around to the ferry at Percuil,
and the ferryman described Coffin and how he'd put him across, the
first question I asked was 'Did you put any one else across that
night?' He said, 'Yes; and not twenty minutes later.' 'Man or
woman?' I asked. 'Man,' said he, 'and a d--d drunk one'--saving your
presence, ladies. I pricked up my ears. 'Drunk?' I asked. How
drunk?' 'Drunk enough to near-upon drown himself,' said the
ferryman. 'It was this way, sir: I'd scarcely finished mooring the
boat again, and was turning to go indoors, when I heard a splash,
t'other side of the creek, where; the path comes down under the loom
of the trees, and, next moment, a voice as if some person was
drowning and guggling for help. So I fit and unmoored again, and
pushed across for dear life, just in time to see a man scrambling
ashore. He was as drunk as a fly, sir, even after his wetting.
Said he was a retired seaman living at Penzance, had come round to
Falmouth on a lime-barge bound for the Truro river, and must get
along to St. Austell in time to attend his sister's wedding there
next morning. Told me his sister's name, but I forget it. Said he'd
fallen in with some brave fellows at Falmouth just returned from the
French war-prisons, and had taken a glass or two. Gave me half a
crown when I brought him over and landed him,' said the ferryman,
'and too far gone in liquor to understand the mistake if I'd
explained it to him, which I didn't.' He was dressed in what
appeared to be a dark cloth jacket, duck trousers of sea-going cut,
and a tarpaulin hat. 'There was just moon enough,' said the
ferry-man, 'to let a man take notice of his trousers, they being
white; and maybe I took particular notice of his legs, because they
were dripping wet. As for his face, by the glimpse I had of it he
was a middle-aged man that had seen trouble.' I asked if he would
know the man again. He said, 'Yes,' he was pretty sure he would.
So there, Lydia, you h