"I have seen in the daily papers," continued Mr. Fleming, "some most extraordinary statements regarding a horrible event which has taken place at Northferry, in your own grounds. I allude, of course, to the murder of Mr. Roberts; and I am shocked to find that an innocent man has not only been charged with the crime, but has actually been committed for trial on the coroner's warrant. From your father's account of his head-gardener, who under the name of Acton excited so much wonder by his erudition, I was speedily led to believe that he was superior to the station he assumed. To hear therefore that he was in reality no other than Mr. Chandos Winslow, did not excite in me the same surprise which it did, I dare say, in others. I never spoke with him but once; and then he affected a certain roughness of manner, mingled strangely enough with quotations from Roman poets; but I saw him several times at a distance in your grounds, and felt sure from his walk and carriage that he was no ordinary man. I was informed accidentally of his relationship to Sir William Winslow the night before I left Northferry; but little expected to hear such a charge against him. Doubtless he will be able to prove his innocence; but still such things ought not to be left to chance, and I shall therefore tender my evidence, which, if the statements in the newspapers be correct, must have some weight." The letter was dated from Sandbourne Vicarage, a place about forty miles distant, on the other side of the county; and Rose had just finished looking over it again, when her maid entered her room to tell her that a gentleman from London was below in the library, and wished to speak with her immediately. At the same time the girl handed her a card, on which was printed a name of which she had no knowledge, except from having seen it mentioned frequently in the public journals, as that of the most eminent barrister of the day. Putting the letter she had previously received into her bag, she went down with some degree of trepidation to the library, to meet a complete, stranger, at a moment when her mind was by no means disposed to society of any kind; but her visitor soon put her at her ease, by the winning gentleness of his manner. "I have to apologize Miss Tracy," he said, "for intruding thus upon a lady without any proper introduction; but my anxiety for the safety of a very dear friend must plead my excuse. Chandos Winslow, whom I think you know, and whom you must at all events be acquainted with under the strange guise of a gardener, is an old and intimate acquaintance of mine; and I have undertaken, against my ordinary rule, to conduct his defence, in the painful and dangerous circumstances in which he is now placed." "Oh, I am so glad to see you," said Rose; "but your words frighten me. I had hoped that it would be perfectly easy to establish his innocence, of which I am sure you can have no more doubt than I have."