ot back about four. Does not this show that with all your alarm you
went to the river-front first?"

"I was gone from two to four," he replied calmly. "Mr. Alexander must
be wrong about the time I wakened him. I got the medicine first."

"When your wife left you at the bridge, did she say where she was
going?"

"No."

"You claim that this woman at Horner was your wife?"

"I think it likely."

"Was there an onyx clock in the second-story room when you moved into
it?"

"I do not recall the clock."

"Your wife did not take an onyx clock away with her?"

Mr. Ladley smiled. "No."

The defense called Mr. Howell next. He looked rested, and the happier
for having seen Lida, but he was still pale and showed the strain of
some hidden anxiety. What that anxiety was, the next two days were to
tell us all.

"Mr. Howell," Mr. Llewellyn asked, "you know the prisoner?"

"Slightly."

"State when you met him."

"On Sunday morning, March the fourth. I went to see him."

"Will you tell us the nature of that visit?"

"My paper had heard he was writing a play for himself. I was to get an
interview, with photographs, if possible."

"You saw his wife at that time?"

"Yes."

"When did you see her again?"

"The following morning, at six o'clock, or a little later. I walked
across the Sixth Street bridge with her, and put her on a train for
Horner, Pennsylvania."

"You are positive it was Jennie Brice?"

"Yes. I watched her get out of the boat, while her husband steadied
it."

"If you knew this, why did you not come forward sooner?"

"I have been out of the city."

"But you knew the prisoner had been arrested, and that this testimony
of yours would be invaluable to him."

"Yes. But I thought it necessary to produce Jennie Brice herself. My
unsupported word--"

"You have been searching for Jennie Brice?"

"Yes. Since March the eighth."

"How was she dressed when you saw her last?"

"She wore a red and black hat and a black coat. She carried a small
brown valise."

"Thank you."

The cross-examination did not shake his testimony. But it brought out
some curious things. Mr. Howell refused to say how he happened to be
at the end of the Sixth Street bridge at that hour, or why he had
thought it necessary, on meeting a woman he claimed to have known only
twenty-four hours, to go with her to the railway station and put her
on a train.

The jury was visibly impressed and much shaken. For Mr. Howell carried