He sat trying to think till he was bewildered, and at last, in a complete maze, he sat listening to the noisy singing of a woman in the next cell, and the drunken howlings of a man on the other side. "My poor darling!" he cried at last; "it will almost break her heart. A burglary! and if they should prove that I was guilty--oh, it is monstrous!" He tried to pace his cell, but it was too narrow, and he sat down again with his hands pressed to his forehead, with the mental darkness coming down upon him thicker than that of his cell. "It's like some nightmare," he said at last, "and as if in some way my brain were unhinged. Absence--absence of mind! My God! will a judge believe me if I say for defence that I committed a robbery in a fit of absence of mind? One has read of strange things in people's lives," he thought after a time--"how they have been totally unconscious of what took place in one half of their existence. Is it possible that my life is divided into two parts, in each of which I am ignorant of what passes in the other? But who would believe it! I'll have Stonor here first thing to-morrow." He sat with his mind growing darker and darker, and vainly struggling against the black oppression; and at last, with a weary wail; he exclaimed unconsciously: "My poor darling, what a night for you! Last night happy and admired-- to-night--oh, thank God--thank God!" For the light had come. The police declared that the burglary had taken place the previous night about nine o'clock at a City house, and that he was seen and nearly captured. Why, a dozen people could prove that he was at Dr Stonor's the whole evening. He rose and tapped sharply at his cell door. "Now then," said a rough voice. "What is it?" "Kindly ask the inspector to come here for a moment," said Huish. The officer on night duty came from his desk where he had been entering the last charge. "Well, sir?" he said, with official brevity. "Sorry to trouble you," said Huish, "but that burglary--when was it?" "Nine o'clock last night--that is, the night before last, for it is now four o'clock." "Thank God," said Huish, and he lay down upon that peculiarly soft bed provided by a humane Government at police-stations for arrested people, and slept soundly for hours. "Precious eager to know when, the crack was done," said the officer, as he looked in at the cell. "Clever dodge--going to try an _alibi_?" What was intended for a preliminary examination took place in the course of the afternoon, and the officer in charge of the case brought forward two or three witnesses to give a sufficiency of evidence to justify a remand, informing the magistrate that he believed that he should be able to produce a long catalogue of crime against the prisoner, who had succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the police for some time past.