"Oh no," answered Morrison, "I think you innocent; nay more, Tyrrell, I know you to be innocent; for I know the very spot on which you stood at the moment your father's murder must have taken place." "Do you know who did it?" exclaimed Charles eagerly, grasping his hand, and gazing intently upon his countenance. "No, I do not," replied Morrison; "I cannot even form an idea." "Then we are as much at sea as ever," erred Charles Tyrrell; "for unless we can clearly show some one to have been guilty, this stigma, let me prove what I will, will always lie heavy upon me." "There is something more to be thought of, Tyrrell," said Everard Morrison, "something far more important. It is to save a life." "Life I care not for," replied Charles Tyrrell, "at least not half so much as honour. But surely they would never think of condemning me in want of more substantial proof than that which already exists." "Men have been brought to the scaffold on half as much;" replied Everard Morrison; "and you see, Tyrrell, there is no time to act. I have been over myself to Harbury. I have seen all the witnesses; and I, as a lawyer, tell you the case is strong against you. I strove to ascertain whether the gardener could positively state the time that you were in the garden, whether you had the gun with you then or not, and whether he had heard the report of a gun after you had passed through the garden. But he had not observed if you had anything in your hand or not, could not tell the exact time of day with any precision, and had heard several guns in the course of the morning, of which he took no notice. The evidence, Tyrrell, is all against you, and you have but one choice." He spoke earnestly and solemnly, and presented to Charles Tyrrell's eyes his probable fate in a far more awful point of view than that in which he had hitherto seen it. "Good God!" thought the unfortunate young gentleman, "to stand in the spring-time of youth upon a public scaffold, condemned to die for the murder of my own father, gazed upon, hooted at perhaps by an abhorring multitude, and by an awful and degrading death, to end a life in which I have known so little happiness, to leave the heart of a mother broken, and to scatter untimely sorrows on the bright morning of one whom I love more than life." It was horrible, very horrible, and he gazed eagerly and painfully in the countenance of his friend, as that friend placed boldly before his eyes the fate that was likely to befall him. "I know, Charles Tyrrell," added Morrison, when he found his companion did not reply, "I know that you do not fear death; but I know that you fear disgrace, dishonour, and a blackened name. Once the fatal ordeal over--once the appearance of your guilt sealed completely by your condemnation and death, and there will be scarcely a motive, scarcely an object, scarcely a means, to remove the load from your memory and cast it upon another. Tyrrell, I tell you again, you have but a chance!"