riedly. "Not here, is he?"

"No; but I saw him, as I came here, not ten minutes since, ride into the
town. It is market-day, and you will probably find him somewhere in the
high street for an hour or two to come," answered he.

Marston thanked him, and, lost in abstraction, rode down to the little
inn, entered a sitting room, and wrote a hurried line to Dr. Danvers,
entreating his attendance there, as a place where they might converse
less interruptedly than in the street; and committing this note to the
waiter, with the injunction to deliver it at once, and an intimation of
where Dr. Danvers was probably to be found, he awaited, with intense and
agitating anxiety, the arrival of the clergyman.

It was not for nearly ten minutes, however, which his impatience
magnified into an eternity, that the well-known voice of Dr. Danvers
reached him from the little hall. It was in vain that Marston strove to
curb his violent agitation: his heart swelled as if it would smother him;
he felt, as it were, the chill of death pervade his frame, and he could
scarcely see the door through which he momentarily expected the entrance
of the clergyman.

A few minutes more, and Dr. Danvers entered the little apartment.

"My dear sir," said he, gravely and earnestly, as he grasped the cold
hand of Marston, "I am rejoiced to see you. I have matters of great
moment and the strangest mystery to lay before you."

"I dare say--I was sure--that is, I suspected so much," answered
Marston, breathing fast, and looking very pale. "I heard at the prison
that the murderer, Merton, was fast dying, and now is in an unconscious
state; and from the physician, that you had seen him, at his urgent
entreaty, last night. My mind misgives me, sir, I fear I know not what. I
long, yet dread, to hear the wretched man's confession. For God's sake
tell me, does it implicate anybody else in the guilt?"

"No; no one specifically; but it has thrown a hideous additional mystery
over the occurrence. Listen to me, my dear sir, and the whole narrative,
as he stated it to me, shall be related now to you," said Dr. Danvers.

Marston had closed the door carefully, and they sate down together at the
further end of the apartment. Marston, breathless and ghastly pale; his
lips compressed--his brows knit--and his dark, dilated gaze fixed
immovably upon the speaker. Dr. Danvers, on the other hand, tranquil and
solemn, and with, perhaps, some shade of awe overcasting the habitua