al officer were handling poor Lord Castlewood. They set him to their
liking, and they cut his clothes off--so Susan told me afterward--and
then they found why they were forced to do so, which I need not try
to tell you, miss. Only they found that he was not dead from any wise
visitation, but because he had been shot with a bullet through his
heart.

"Old Dr. Diggory came out shaking, and without any wholesome sense
to meet what had arisen, after all his practice with dead men, and
he called out 'Murder!' with a long thing in his hand, till my master
leaped down the stairs, twelve at a time, and laid his strong hand on
the old fool's mouth.

"'Would you kill my wife?' he said; 'you shall not kill my wife.'

"'Captain Castlewood,' the constable answered, pulling out his staff
importantly, 'consider yourself my prisoner.'

"The Captain could have throttled him with one hand, and Susan thought
he would have done it. But, instead of that, he said, 'Very well; do
your duty. But let me see what you mean by it.' Then he walked back
again to the body of his father, and saw that he had been murdered.

"But, oh, Miss Erema, you are so pale! Not a bit of food have you had
for hours. I ought not to have told you such a deal of it to once. Let
me undo all your things, my dear, and give you something cordial; and
then lie down and sleep a bit."

"No, thank you, nurse," I answered, calling all my little courage back.
"No sleep for me until I know every word. And to think of all my father
had to see and bear! I am not fit to be his daughter."

CHAPTER XXV

BETSY'S TALE--(Concluded.)

"Well, now," continued Mrs. Strouss, as soon as I could persuade her
to go on, "if I were to tell you every little thing that went on among
them, miss, I should go on from this to this day week, or I might say
this day fortnight, and then not half be done with it. And the worst of
it is that those little things make all the odds in a case of that sort,
showing what the great things were. But only a counselor at the Old
Bailey could make head or tail of the goings on that followed.

"For some reason of his own, unknown to any living being but himself,
whether it were pride (as I always said) or something deeper (as other
people thought), he refused to have any one on earth to help him, when
he ought to have had the deepest lawyer to be found. The constable
cautioned him to say nothing, as it seems is laid down in their orders,
for fear of c