every
description: rags and velvets, a common blouse and good broadcloth,
side by side.

At a small common table in the centre of the room sat Gascoigne's
judge, with the same cold face, only darkened now by a frown.

"Once more," he said, abruptly--"will you confess your crime?"

Gascoigne looked at him contemptuously, but held his tongue.

"Do you still refuse? Do you still obstinately persist in remaining
dumb? Very well, we shall see."

The judge got up from his chair, and disappeared through a side-door.

After a short pause, Gascoigne's escort bade him march, and the three
followed through the same door.

They entered a second chamber, smaller than the first, the uses of
which were at once obvious to Gascoigne, although he had never been
there before. It was like a low shed or workroom, lighted from above,
perfectly plain--even bald--in its decoration, but in the centre,
occupying the greater part of the space, and leaving room only for a
passage around, was a large flat slab of marble, something like that
seen in fishmongers' shops. The similarity was maintained by the sound
of water constantly flowing and falling upon the marble slab, as
though to keep it and its burden always fresh and cool.

But that burden! Three corpses, stark naked but for a decent
waistband, were laid out upon the marble table. One was that of a
child who had been fished up from the Seine that morning; the second
that of a stonemason who had fallen from a scaffolding and broken his
neck and both legs; the third was the murdered man of the Hotel
Paradis, the Baron d'Enot, stripped of his well-made clothes, lying
stark and stiff on his back, with the great knife-wound gaping red and
festering in his breast.

"There!" cried the judge, triumphantly, leaning forward to scrutinise
narrowly the effect of this hideous confrontation upon the prisoner.

To his bitter disappointment, this carefully prepared theatrical
effect, so frequently practised and so often successful with French
criminals, altogether failed with Gascoigne. The Englishman certainly
had started at the first sight of the corpse, but it was a natural
movement of horror which might have escaped any unconcerned spectator
at being brought into the presence of death in such a hideous form.
After betraying this first and not unnatural sign of emotion,
Gascoigne remained perfectly cool, self-possessed, and unperturbed.

"You see your victim there; now will you confess?" cri