Ambrose Murray was the first to break the silence. "Upwards of twenty years have gone by," he said, "since Paul Stilling was murdered one night at the Pelican Hotel, Tewkesbury, and the prospect of my being able to prove my innocence after such a lapse of time would to most people appear an utterly hopeless one; and even to me, in my most sanguine moments, the chances of success seem very faint and far away indeed. Still, it is for this hope alone that I now live." "Has any fresh evidence been discovered since the trial?" asked Miss Bellamy; "anything tending to exculpate you and fix the crime on the real murderer?" "So far as I know, nothing has been discovered. The case virtually came to an end with my condemnation. The world believed me to be guilty--no one cared to sift further into the matter, and I was left to my fate." "We none of us believed you to be guilty," said Miss Bellamy, with much earnestness. "But the evidence was so terribly against you, and events followed each other so quickly, and we poor women were all so bewildered and heart-broken, that--that we felt as if we could do nothing." "As you say, Maria--you could do nothing; and I have never wronged any of those who were my friends at that sad time by thinking that more could have been done for me than was done. What was wanted was time, and that the law would not grant: time, and a man of strong will and clear brain, and then, perhaps, the mystery might have been fathomed." "Then what it is now requisite to do," said Gerald, joining in the conversation for the first time, "is to reopen the case; to set to work on it, in fact, as if the murder had been committed only last week, instead of twenty years ago." "That is precisely what I propose to do," said Murray. "And the first step is----?" "To find out whether Max Jacoby is living or dead." "Max Jacoby?" said Miss Bellamy. "I have not heard that name for years; but what a flood of painful reminiscences the mention of it recalls!" "Who was the man you speak of?" asked Gerald. "He was the man who murdered Paul Stilling!" "You stare at me as if you believed me to be still mad," he added, after a pause, addressing himself to Miss Bellamy: "and you ask me in your thoughts, if you do not with your lips, what evidence I can bring to prove the truth of what I have just stated. My answer is, that I cannot adduce one tittle of evidence that would be considered worth a moment's notice in a court of law: but not the less sure am I that he was the man." Neither Gerald nor Miss Bellamy could help being impressed by his earnestness, however disposed they might be to think that nothing but disappointment could ever issue from it. "Have you any clue by means of which it may be possible to trace the present whereabouts of this man, Max Jacoby?" asked Gerald presently. "I have no clue of any kind." He said this, not despondently, but as cheerfully as though the point involved were of no consequence whatever.