?"

"Yes, I suppose I was angry. He was most unjust to me."

"He had used very violent language to you, had he not?"

"Yes."

"He had threatened your life if you tried to see his daughter again?"

"Yes."

"Now, Mr. Swain, as you stood there, angry and humiliated, didn't you
make up your mind to follow him to the house and have it out with
him?"

Swain smiled.

"I'm lawyer enough to know," he said, "that a question like that isn't
permissible. But I'll answer it. I may have had such an impulse--I
don't know; but the sight of the cobra there in the arbour put it
effectually out of my head."

"You still think there was a cobra?"

"I am sure of it."

"And you ran out of the arbour so fast you bumped your head?"

"I suppose that's what happened. It's mighty sore, anyway," and Swain
put his hand to it ruefully.

"Mr. Swain," went on the coroner, slowly, "are you prepared to swear
that, after you hurt your head, you might not, in a confused and
half-dazed condition, have followed your previous impulse to go to the
house and see Mr. Vaughan?"

"Yes," answered Swain, emphatically, "I am. Although I was somewhat
dazed, I have a distinct recollection of going straight to the wall
and climbing back over it."

"You cut your wrist as you were crossing the wall the first time?"

[Illustration: "I'm lawyer enough to know," he said, "that a question
like that is not permissible"]

"Yes," and Swain held up his hand and showed the strip of plaster
across the wound.

"Your right wrist?"

"Yes."

"It bled freely, did it not?"

"Very freely."

"What became of the clothes you took off when you changed into those
brought by Mr. Godfrey?"

"I don't know. Mr. Lester told me they were left here. I intended to
inquire for them."

At a sign from Goldberger, Simmonds opened a suit-case and placed a
bundle on the table. Goldberger unrolled it and handed it to Swain.

"Are these the clothes?" he asked.

"Yes," said Swain, after a moment's examination.

"Will you hold the shirt up so the jury can see it?"

Swain held the garment up, and everybody's eyes were fixed upon the
blood-soaked sleeve.

"There seems to have been a good deal of blood," remarked Goldberger.
"It must have run down over your hand."

"It did. It was all over my fingers."

"So that it would probably stain anything you touched?"

"Yes, very probably."

"Did you think of that when you were in the arbour with Miss Vaughan?"

Swain's face