what charge?"

"The murder of Sir Philip Derval."

"I--I! Murder!" I could say no more.

I must hurry over this awful passage in my marvellous record. It is
torture to dwell on the details; and indeed I have so sought to chase
them from my recollection, that they only come back to me in hideous
fragments, like the incoherent remains of a horrible dream.

All that I need state is as follows: Early on the very morning on which
I had been arrested, a man, a stranger in the town, had privately sought
Mr. Vigors, and deposed that on the night of the murder, he had been
taking refuge from a sudden storm under shelter of the eaves and
buttresses of a wall adjoining an old archway; that he had heard men
talking within the archway; had heard one say to the other, "You still
bear me a grudge." The other had replied, "I can forgive you on one
condition." That he then lost much of the conversation that ensued,
which was in a lower voice; but he gathered enough to know that the
condition demanded by the one was the possession of a casket which the
other carried about with him; that there seemed an altercation on this
matter between the two men, which, to judge by the tones of voice, was
angry on the part of the man demanding the casket; that, finally, this
man said in a loud key, "Do you still refuse?" and on receiving the
answer, which the witness did not overhear, exclaimed threateningly, "It
is you who will repent," and then stepped forth from the arch into the
street. The rain had then ceased, but by a broad flash of lightning
the witness saw distinctly the figure of the person thus quitting the
shelter of the arch,--a man of tall stature, powerful frame, erect
carriage. A little time afterwards, witness saw a slighter and older man
come forth from the arch, whom he could only examine by the flickering
ray of the gas-lamp near the wall, the lightning having ceased, but whom
he fully believed to be the person he afterwards discovered to be Sir
Philip Derval.

He said that he himself had only arrived at the town a few hours before;
a stranger to L----, and indeed to England, having come from the United
States of America, where he had passed his life from childhood. He had
journeyed on foot to L----, in the hope of finding there some distant
relatives. He had put up at a small inn, after which he had strolled
through the town, when the storm had driven him to seek shelter. He had
then failed to find his way back to the inn, an