osegay in the vase out of my way. There was
a woman's face painted on the china, and he told me it was the living
image of _her_ face. It was no more like her than I am. I was in such a
rage that I up with the book I was reading at the time and shied it at
the painted face. Over the vase went, bless your heart, crash to the
floor. Stop a bit! I wonder whether _that's_ the book you have been
looking after? Are you like me? Do you like reading Trials?"

Trials? Had I heard her aright? Yes: she had said Trials.

I answered by an affirmative motion of my head. I was still speechless.
The girl sauntered in her cool way to the fire-place, and, taking up the
tongs, returned with them to the book-case.

"Here's where the book fell," she said--"in the space between the
book-case and the wall. I'll have it out in no time."

I waited without moving a muscle, without uttering a word.

She approached me with the tongs in one hand and with a plainly bound
volume in the other.

"Is that the book?" she said. "Open it, and see."

I took the book from her.

"It is tremendously interesting," she went on. "I've read it twice
over--I have. Mind you, _I_ believe he did it, after all."

Did it? Did what? What was she talking about? I tried to put the
question to her. I struggled--quite vainly--to say only these words:
"What are you talking about?"

She seemed to lose all patience with me. She snatched the book out of
my hand, and opened it before me on the table by which we were standing
side by side.

"I declare, you're as helpless as a baby!" she said, contemptuously.
"There! _Is_ that the book?"

I read the first lines on the title-page--

A COMPLETE REPORT OF THE TRIAL OF EUSTACE MACALLAN.

I stopped and looked up at her. She started back from me with a scream
of terror. I looked down again at the title-page, and read the next
lines--

FOR THE ALLEGED POISONING OF HIS WIFE.

There, God's mercy remembered me. There the black blank of a swoon
swallowed me up.

CHAPTER XI. THE RETURN TO LIFE.

My first remembrance when I began to recover my senses was the
remembrance of Pain--agonizing pain, as if every nerve in my body were
being twisted and torn out of me. My whole being writhed and quivered
under the dumb and dreadful protest of Nature against the effort to
recall me to life. I would have given worlds to be able to cry out--to
entreat the unseen creatures about me to give me back to death. How long
that s