'That is where you are very much mistaken. Bring me the boots the
butler wore.'

'He did not wear boots, sir. He wore a pair of cloth slippers.'

'Do you know where they are?'

'Yes; they are in the boot closet.'

'Very well, bring them out, examine their soles, and sticking in one
of them you will find a short sliver of pointed oak.'

The constable, looking slightly more stupefied than ever, brought the
slippers, and I heard him ejaculate: 'Well, I'm blowed!' as he
approached me. He handed me the slippers soles upward, and there, as I
have stated, was the fragment of oak, which I pulled out.

'Now, if you take this piece of oak to the top of the stair, you will
see that it fits exactly a slight interstice at the edge of one of the
planks. It is as well to keep one's eyes open, constable, when
investigating a case like this.'

'Well, I'm blowed!' he said again, as we walked up the stair
together.

I showed him that the sliver taken from the slipper fitted exactly the
interstice I had indicated.

'Now,' said I to him, 'the butler was not going up the stairs, but was
coming down. When he fell headlong he must have made a fearful
clatter. Shuffling along with his burden, his slipper was impaled by
this sliver, and the butler's hands being full, he could not save
himself, but went head foremost down the stair. The startling point,
however, is the fact that he was _not_ carrying my lord's breakfast to
him, or taking it away from him, but that there is someone else in the
castle for whom he was caterer. Who is that person?'

'I'm blessed if I know,' said the constable, 'but I think you are
wrong there. He may not have been carrying up the breakfast, but he
certainly was taking away the tray, as is shown by the empty dishes,
which you have just a moment ago pointed out.'

'No, constable; when his lordship heard the crash, and sprang
impulsively from his bed, he upset the little table on which had been
placed his own tray; it shot over the oaken chest at the head of the
bed, and if you look between it and the wall you will find tray,
dishes, and the remnants of a breakfast.'

'Well, I'm blessed!' exclaimed the chief constable once again.

'The main point of all this,' I went on calmly, 'is not the disaster
to the butler, nor even the shock to his lordship, but the fact that
the tray the serving man carried brought food to a prisoner, who
probably for six weeks has been without anything to eat.'

'Then,' sai