ave soul and try this book, taking your time over it.

________________________________________________________________________
WITNESS TO THE DEED, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.

CHAPTER ONE.

IN BENCHERS' INN.

"My darling! Mine at last!" _Ting-tang; ting-tang; ting-tang_.

Malcolm Stratton, F.Z.S., naturalist, a handsome, dark-complexioned man
of eight-and-twenty, started and flushed like a girl as he hurriedly
thrust the photograph he had been apostrophising into his breast pocket,
and ran to the deep, dingy window of his chambers to look at the clock
over the old hall of Bencher's Inn, E.C. It was an unnecessary piece of
business, for there was a black marble clock on the old carved oak
chimney-piece nestling among Grinling Gibbons' wooden flowers and
pippins, and he had been dragging his watch from his pocket every ten
minutes since he had risen at seven, taken his bath, and dressed; but he
had forgotten the hour the next minute, and gone on making his
preparations, haunted by the great dread lest he should be too late.

"Quarter to ten yet," he muttered. "How slowly the time goes!" As he
spoke he sniffed slightly and smiled, for a peculiar aromatic
incense-like odour had crept into the room through the chinks in a door.

He stepped back to where a new-looking portmanteau lay upon the Turkey
carpet, and stood contemplating it for a few moments.

"Now, have I forgotten anything?"

This question was followed by a slow look round the quaint, handsomely
furnished old oak-panelled room, one of several suites let out to
bachelors who could pay well, and who affected the grim old inn with its
plane trees, basin of water, and refreshing quiet, just out of the roar
of the busy city street. And as Malcolm Stratton looked round his eyes
rested on his cases of valuable books and busts of famous naturalists,
and a couple of family portraits, both of which seemed to smile at him
pleasantly; and then on and over natural history specimens, curious
stuffed birds, a cabinet of osteological preparations, and over and
around the heavy looking carvings and mouldings about the four doorways,
and continued from the fireplace up to the low ceiling. But, look where
he would, he could see nothing but a beautiful face with large, pensive
eyes, gazing with loving trust in his as he had seen them only a few
hours before when he had said "good-night."

"Bah! I shall never be ready," he cried, with an impatient laugh, and
cros