The counsel was going to interrupt him with another question; but the look of the judge so plainly said, let him go on, that he paused, and the old man proceeded as if he were telling a tale. "He seemed very much surprised like," he continued, "when I told him I had seen all; but not frightened either, though I thought he would have been much frightened, indeed; but he said no, that it was all quite true that I said; that he had had quite provocation enough, to justify him in what he had done; that he considered it a good to society to put such a man as Sir Francis Tyrrell out of the way, and that he wondered it had not been done years before. So I said, I thought so, too, and that was the reason I had never told anybody what I had seen; for he had aggravated me not long before, till I had well nigh knocked his brains out; but that now the young gentleman's life was in danger, and so I must tell the whole. So then again he said I was quite right, that if I had not been there to do it, he would have told the whole himself; but that as I was going to tell the whole, there was no need for him to do it, and he would, therefore, take himself out of harm's way." "Out of harm's way, indeed!" said the judge. "Pray, did he tell you, witness, how he intended to take himself out of harm's way?" "No, sir," replied the old man; "but I suppose in a cutter, that would be shortest." "He has found a shorter still," answered the judge, with a sigh. "This is, altogether, as awful a case as I ever had the pain to have brought before me. A paper has been put into my hands, addressed to myself, since the beginning of the trial, with which I anticipated some difficulty in dealing. But from the turn which the evidence has taken, I think it but right and necessary, that the jury should have the advantage of its contents, in order that not the slightest doubt may remain upon the case, although, even as it stands at present, their duty would be very straight forward. It is addressed to me by a person signing himself, Henry Driesen; and I have just been informed, that it was found this morning on his dressing-table at Harbury Park, with directions to deliver it immediately, the unhappy writer having been found dead in his bed, with strong reason to suppose that he had poisoned himself, with distilled laurel leaves." When Smithson had first mentioned, that the person who had killed his father, was the same who had acted the part of chief mourner at the funeral, Charles Tyrrell had covered his eyes with his hands, and leant forward upon the bar. But when the announcement was made by the judge, of the terrible end of his career, the young baronet withdrew his hands, and gazed up with a painful and even more horror-struck glance than before. In the meanwhile, however, the paper, which was written by Mr. Driesen, was handed to the clerk, who read as follows:-- "MY LORD,