o other support than a wicked lie. I
killed my brother for reasons good as any man ever had for killing
another. But I shall not impart them. I would rather be tried for murder
and hanged."

It was a complete breakdown, pitiful from its contrast with the man's
herculean physique and fine, if contracted, features. If the end, it was
a sad end, and Mr. Gryce, whose forehead had taken on a deep line
between the eyebrows, slowly rose and took his stand by the young man,
who looked ready to fall. The inspector, on the contrary, did not move.
He had begun a tattoo with his fingers on the table, and seemed bound to
beat it out, when another sudden cry broke from the young man's lips:

"What is that?" he demanded, with his eyes fixed on the door, and his
whole frame shaking violently.

"Nothing," began the inspector, when the door suddenly opened and the
figure of a woman white as a wraith and wonderful with a sort of holy
passion darted from the grasp of a man who sought to detain her, and
stood before them, palpitating with a protest which for a moment she
seemed powerless to utter.

It was Adams's young, invalid wife, whom he had left three hours before
at Belleville. She was so frail of form, so exquisite of feature, that
she would have seemed some unearthly visitant but for the human anguish
which pervaded her look and soon found vent in this touching cry:

"What is he saying? Oh, I know well what he is saying. He is saying that
he killed his brother, that he held the dagger which rid the world of a
monster of whose wickedness none knew. But you must not heed him. Indeed
you must not heed him. He is innocent; I, his wife, have come twenty
miles, from a bed of weakness and suffering, to tell you so. He----"

But here a hand was laid gently, but firmly on her mouth. She looked up,
met her husband's eyes filled with almost frantic appeal, and giving him
a look in return that sank into the heart of every man who beheld it,
laid her own hand on his and drew it softly away.

"It is too late, Tom, I must speak. My father, my own weakness, or your
own peremptory commands could not keep me at Belleville when I knew you
had been brought here. And shall I stop now, in the presence of these
men who have heard your words and may believe them? No, that would be a
cowardice unworthy of our love and the true lives we hope to lead
together. Sirs!" and each man there held his breath to catch the words
which came in faint and fainter