do you think you'll have to give evidence again?"

"Maybe," said Brent.

She gave him a meaning look and lowered her voice.

"Well," she whispered, "if you have to, don't let anything come out
about--about those letters. You know what I mean--the letters you got
for me from his rooms? I--I don't want it to be known, in the town, that
he and I corresponded as much as all that. After all, there are some
things----"

Just then, and while Brent was beginning to speculate on this
suddenly-revealed desire for secrecy, a movement in the crowd ahead of
them showed that the doors of the Moot Hall had been thrown open; he,
too, moved forward, drawing his companion with him.

"You'll not forget that?" said Mrs. Saumarez insistently. "It's--those
letters, I mean--they're nothing to do with this, of course--nothing!
Don't let it out that----"

"I shan't volunteer any evidence of any sort," responded Brent. "If I'm
confronted with a direct question which necessitates a direct answer,
that's another matter. But I don't think you've anything to worry
about--I should say that what they want you for is to ask a question or
two as to my cousin's movements that night, didn't he call at your house
on his way to the Mayor's Parlour? Yes, why that'll be about it!"

"I hope so!" said Mrs. Saumarez, with a sigh of relief. "But--that
witness-box, and before all these people--I don't like it."

"Got to be done," observed Brent. "Soon over, though. Now let's get in."

He piloted Mrs. Saumarez and her companion into the borough Court,
handed over to the Coroner for the special purposes of his inquest,
found them seats in a reserved part, and leaving them went over to the
solicitor's table, where he took a place by the side of Tansley, already
settled there with his notes and papers. Tansley gave him a significant
glance, nodding his head sideways at other men near them.

"Going to be a more serious affair, this, than the first was, Brent," he
whispered. "These police chaps have either got something up their
sleeves or Hawthwaite's got some bee in his bonnet! Anyway, there's a
barrister in the case on their behalf--that little, keen-eyed chap at
the far end of the table on your left; that's Meeking, one of the
sharpest criminal barristers going--and I hear they're meaning to call a
lot of new witnesses. But what it's all about, I don't know."

Brent looked up and down the table at which they were sitting. There
were men there--legal-look