"Your familiarity with the contents of this letter," said Gerald at last, "has enabled you to arrive at certain conclusions in your own mind such as we, to whom the letter comes as an utter surprise, can no more than barely guess at. Do you mind telling us what those conclusions are?" "The conclusions I have come to are very few and very simple," said Byrne; "simple, inasmuch as, to my mind, knowing what I know, they are plainly discoverable through the thin veil of obscurity in which the contents of the letter are purposely involved. My conclusions are these: That this letter was written within a very short time after the murder and subsequent trial. That the property whose loss Jacoby bewails in such bitter terms was neither more nor less than the proceeds of the murder, with which he was going abroad. That when the ship went to the bottom, Jacoby's ill-gotten gains went with her, and that Jacoby himself, having no longer the means of going abroad, came back to London in a state of utter destitution, as is evidenced by his begging the loan of a five-pound note from his quondam friend." "Yes," said Gerald, after a few minutes of silent thought, "I quite agree with you that the construction which you have put upon the contents of this letter is a most feasible one, and I am inclined to think that it is also the true one. But even granting that such be the case, I confess I am still at a loss to understand in what way a proposal of marriage from Jacoby to your daughter can forward by one single step the special end we have in view--to bring home the crime to the real murderer." "That, too, is where I am puzzled," said Murray; "for, singular as this letter is, and confirmatory as it is of the belief I have all along maintained, that Jacoby is the guilty man, I altogether fail to see in what way Mr. Byrne's late proceedings tend to fix the guilt upon him."