"There's no doubt that it was deliberate murder!" replied Mr. Edwin Barley. "My ward affirmed it to me with his dying lips. They were his own words. I expressed a doubt, as you are doing. 'It was Heneage,' he said; 'I tell it you with my dying lips.' A bad man!—a villain!" Mr. Barley emphatically added. "Another day or two, and I should have kicked him out of my house; I waited but a decent pretext." "If he is that, why did you have him in it?" asked the surgeon. "Because it is but recently that my eyes have been opened to him and his ways. This poor fellow," pointing to the dead, "lifted their scales for me in the first instance. Pity the other is not the one to be lying here!" Sounds of hysterical emotion were heard on the stairs: they came from Mrs. Edwin Barley. It appeared that she had been sitting on the lowest step all this while, her face bent on her knees, and must have heard what passed. Mr. Barley, as if wishing to offer an apology for her, said she had just looked on Philip King's face, and it had frightened her much. Mr. Lowe tried to persuade her to retire from the scene, but she would not, and there she sat on, growing calm by degrees. The surgeon measured something in a teaspoon into a wine-glass, filled it up with cold water, and made her drink it. He then took his leave, saying that he would call again in the course of the evening. Not a minute had he been gone, when Mr. Martin burst into the hall. "What is this report?" he cried, in agitation. "People are saying that Philip King is killed." "They might have said murdered," said Mr. Edwin Barley. "Heneage shot him in the wood." "Heneage!" "Heneage. Took aim, and fired at him, and killed him. There never was a case of more deliberate murder." That Mr. Edwin Barley was actuated by intense animus as he said this, the tone proved. "Poor fellow!" said the clergyman, gently, as he leaned over him and touched his face. "I have seen for some days they were not cordial. What ill-blood could have been between them?" "Heneage had better explain that when he makes his defence," said Mr. Edwin Barley, grimly. "It is but a night or two ago that we were speculating on his health, upon his taking a profession; we might have spared ourselves the pains, poor lad. I asked you, who was his heir-at-law, little thinking another would so soon inherit." Mr. Edwin Barley made no reply. "Why—good heavens!—is that Mrs. Barley sitting there?" he inquired, in a low tone, as his eyes fell on the distant stairs. "She won't move away. These things do terrify women. Don't notice her, Martin: she will be better left to herself." "Upon my word, this is a startling and sudden blow," resumed the clergyman, again recurring to the death. "But you must surely be mistaken in calling it murder." "There's no mistake about it: it was wilful murder. I am as sure of it as though I had seen the aim taken," persisted Mr. Barley. "And I will pursue Heneage to the death."