and
murderer, he wanted.

The days succeeded one another: nothing was done. He lamented, too
late, he had not applied for a reprieve, or even a pardon. He deplored
his own presumption in assuming that he could unravel such a mystery
entirely. His busy brain schemed night and day; he lost his sleep, and
even his appetite. At last, in sheer despair, he proposed to himself a
new solution, and acted upon it in the dark and with consummate
subtlety; for he said to himself: "I am in deeper water than I thought
Lord, how they skim a case at the Old Bailey! They take a pond for a
puddle, and go to fathom it with a forefinger."

Captain Cowen sank into a settled gloom; but he no longer courted
solitude; it gave him the horrors. He preferred to be in company,
though he no longer shone in it. He made acquaintance with his
neighbor, and rather liked him. The man had been in the Commissariat
Department, and seemed half surprised at the honor a captain did him in
conversing with him. But he was well versed in all the incidents of
the late wars, and Cowen was glad to go with him into the past; for the
present was dead, and the future horrible.

This Mr. Cutler, so deferential when sober, was inclined to be more
familiar when in his cups, and that generally ended in his singing and
talking to himself in his own room in the absurdest way. He never went
out without a black leather case strapped across his back like a
despatch-box. When joked and asked as to the contents, he used to say,
"Papers, papers," curtly.

One evening, being rather the worse for liquor, he dropped it, and
there was a metallic sound. This was immediately commented on by the
wags of the company.

"That fell heavy for paper," said one.

"And there was a ring," said another.

"Come, unload thy pack, comrade, and show us thy papers."

Cutler was sobered in a moment, and looked scared. Cowen observed
this, and quietly left the room. He went up-stairs to his own room,
and, mounting on a chair, he found a thin place in the partition and
made an eyelet-hole.

That very night he made use of this with good effect. Cutler came up
to bed, singing and whistling, but presently threw down something
heavy, and was silent. Cowen spied, and saw him kneel down, draw from
his bosom a key suspended round his neck by a ribbon, and open the
despatch-box. There were papers in it, but only to deaden the sound of
a great many new guineas that glittered in the li