ticularly
inartistic trick, unworthy of its author. The mere facility with which
Randolph discovered the buried jewels by the aid of a dim lantern,
should have served as a hint to an educated police not afraid of facing
the improbable. The jewels had been _put_ there with the object of
throwing suspicion on the imaginary burglars; with the same design the
catch of the window had been wrenched off, the sash purposely left
open, the track made, the valuables taken from Lord Pharanx's room. All
this was deliberately done by some one--would it be rash to say at once
by whom?

'Our suspicions having now lost their whole character of vagueness, and
begun to lead us in a perfectly definite direction, let us examine the
statements of Hester Dyett. Now, it is immediately comprehensible to me
that the evidence of this woman at the public examinations was looked
at askance. There can be no doubt that she is a poor specimen of
humanity, an undesirable servant, a peering, hysterical caricature of a
woman. Her statements, if formally recorded, were not believed; or if
believed, were believed with only half the mind. No attempt was made to
deduce anything from them. But for my part, if I wanted specially
reliable evidence as to any matter of fact, it is precisely from such a
being that I would seek it. Let me draw you a picture of that class of
intellect. They have a greed for information, but the information, to
satisfy them, must relate to actualities; they have no sympathy with
fiction; it is from their impatience of what seems to be that springs
their curiosity of what _is_. Clio is their muse, and she alone. Their
whole lust is to gather knowledge through a hole, their whole faculty
is to _peep_. But they are destitute of imagination, and do not lie; in
their passion for realities they would esteem it a sacrilege to distort
history. They make straight for the substantial, the indubitable. For
this reason the Peniculi and Ergasili of Plautus seem to me far more
true to nature than the character of Paul Pry in Jerrold's comedy. In
one instance, indeed, the evidence of Hester Dyett appears, on the
surface of it, to be quite false. She declares that she sees a round
white object moving upward in the room. But the night being gloomy, her
taper having gone out, she must have been standing in a dense darkness.
How then could she see this object? Her evidence, it was argued, must
be designedly false, or else (as she was in an ecstatic co