"God knows, my dear--some of their liberty, fraternity, and equality nonsense, I suppose. At all events, this is the supposition; and to ask my aid in investigating the only clue in the possession of the government was the object of Mr. Dalrymple's visit yesterday. The man who was seen in the company of the murdered man by the waiter at the tavern, and who went away with him, wore a coat made by Evans of Amherst. You know him, Clare--the old man who does so much of our work here. I went to his shop with Mr. Dalrymple, and we found out all about the coat. He remembered it exactly, by the description; and told us when he had made it (two years ago), and when he had sold it (six weeks ago), to a person who paid for it with a ten-pound note with the Post-office stamp upon it. The old man is not very bright, however; for though he remembered the circumstance, and found the date in his day-book, he could not give anything like a clear description of the man who had bought the coat. He could only tell us, in general terms, that he would certainly know him again if he should see him; but he talked about a rather tall young man, neither stout nor thin, neither ugly nor handsome, dark-eyed and dark-haired,--in short, the kind of description which describes nothing. We came away as wise as we went, except in the matter of the date of the purchase of the coat. That does not help much towards the detection of the murderer, as a coat may change hands many times in six weeks, if it has been originally bought by a dubious person. The thing would have been to establish a likeness between the man described by Evans as the purchaser of the coat, and the man described by the waiter as the wearer of the coat at the tavern. But both descriptions are very vague." "What was the coat like?" asked Clare in a strange, deliberate tone. "It was a blue Witney overcoat, with a label inside the collar bearing Evans's name. The waiter at the tavern where the murdered man dined had read the name, and remembered it. This led to their sending to me; and my being known to the authorities as a very active magistrate"--here Mr. Carruthers swelled and pouted with importance--"they naturally communicated with me. The question is now, how I am to justify the very flattering confidence which Lord Wolstenholme has placed in me? It is a difficult question, and I have been considering it maturely. Mr. Dalrymple seems to think the clue quite lost. But I am not disposed to let it rest; I am determined to set every possible engine at work to discover whether the description given by the waiter and that given by Evans tally with one another." "You said the inquest was adjourned, I think," said Clare.