"No proof? Oh, father, you don't know—you don't know. They have been to Winchester. I heard from Clement's mother that he had gone there; and I went after him, and found out where he was—at the inn where you stayed, where you refused to see me—and that there was a man with him. I waited about the streets; and at night I saw them both, the man and Clement. Oh! father, I knew they could have only one purpose in coming to that place. I saw them at night; and the next day I watched again—waiting about the street, and hiding myself under porches or in shops, when there was any chance of my being seen. I saw Clement leave the George, and take the way towards the cathedral. I went to the cathedral-yard afterwards, and saw the strange man talking in a doorway with an old man. I loitered about the cathedral-yard, and saw the man that was with Clement go away, down by the meadows, towards the grove, to the place where——" She stopped, and trembled so violently that she was unable to speak. Joseph Wilmot filled the glass with brandy for the second time, and put it to his daughter's lips. She drank about a teaspoonful, and then went on, speaking very rapidly, and in broken sentences— "I followed the man, keeping a good way behind, so that he might not see that he was followed. He went straight down to the very place where—the murder was done. Clement was there, and three men. They were there under the trees, and they were dragging the water." "Dragging the water! Oh, my God, why were they doing that?" cried the man, dropping suddenly on the chair nearest to him, and with his face livid. For the first time since Margaret had entered the room terror took possession of him. Until now he had listened attentively, anxiously; but the ghastly look of fear and horror was new upon his face. He had defied discovery. There was only one thing that could be used against him—the bundle of clothes, the marked garments of the murdered man—those fatal garments which he had been unable to destroy, which he had only been able to hide. These things alone could give evidence against him; but who should think of searching for these things? Again and again he had thought of the bundle at the bottom of the stream, only to laugh at the wondrous science of discovery which had slunk back baffled by so slight a mystery, only to fancy the water-rats gnawing the dead man's garments, and all the oose and slime creeping in and out amongst the folds until the rotting rags became a very part of the rank river-weeds that crawled and tangled round them. He had thought this, and the knowledge that strangers had been busy on that spot, dragging the water—the dreadful water that had so often flowed through his dreams—with, not one, but a thousand dead faces looking up and grinning at him through the stream—the tidings that a search had been made there, came upon him like a thunderbolt. "Why did they drag the water?" he cried again.