As they passed on toward the magistrate's house, an eager and curious crowd gradually collected and accompanied them; and just as they reached Digby Hall, a distant convulsive scream, and his name frantically pronounced by a voice which the prisoner but too well recognized, told him that his wife had heard of his capture, and was hurrying to join him. He drew back, but his captors urged him impatiently on; the hall-door was slammed in the faces of the crowd, and he found himself in the presence of the magistrate and the elder Nichols. The attorney, who appeared to be strongly agitated, deposed in substance that the prisoner had been seen by his son near his premises a few minutes before the fire burst out; that he had abused and assaulted young Mr. Nichols but a few hours previously in the market at Christchurch; and that he had himself received a threatening letter, which he now produced, only two days before, and which he believed to be in the prisoner's handwriting-- The prisoner, bewildered by terror, eagerly denied that he wrote the letter. This unfortunate denial was easily disposed of, by the production, by the constable, of a half sheet of letter-paper found in the cottage, the ragged edge of which precisely fitted that of the letter. Edward Lovegrove would have been fully committed at once, but that the magistrate thought it desirable that the deposition of Arthur Nichols should be first formally taken. This course was reluctantly acquiesced in by the prosecutor, and the prisoner was remanded to the next day. The dismay of Charity Symons, when he found that his well-intentioned present had only brought additional suffering upon the Lovegroves, was intense and bitter; but how to help them, he knew not. He had half made up his mind to obtain--no matter by what means--a sight of certain papers which he had long dimly suspected would make strange revelations upon matters affecting Mary Lovegrove, when the arrest of her husband on a charge of incendiarism thoroughly determined him to risk the expedient he had long hesitatingly contemplated. The charge, he was quite satisfied in his own mind, was an atrocious fabrication, strongly as circumstances seemed to color and confirm it. The clerk, as he sat that afternoon in the office silently pursuing his ill-paid drudgery, noticed that his employer was strangely ill at ease. He was restless, and savagely impatient of the slightest delay on the most necessary question. Evening fell early--it was now near the end of October, and Symons with a respectful bow, left the office. A few minutes afterward, the attorney having carefully locked his desk, iron chest, &c., and placed the keys in his pocket, followed.