"But they are _not_ the same, sir," respectfully persisted Abel. "I know my own pills, and I know my own boxes: these are neither the one nor the other." "Now that won't do; you must take us all for fools!" exploded the coroner, who was a man of quick temper. "Just you stand back and be quiet." "Never a pill-box went out from my hands, sir, but it had my little private mark upon it," urged Abel. "That box does not bear the mark." "What is the mark, pray?" asked the coroner. "Four little dots of ink inside the rim of the lid, sir; and four similar dots inside the box near the edge. They are so faint that a casual observer might not notice them; but they are always there. Of all the pill-boxes now in my house, sir--and I suppose there may be two or three dozen of them--you will not find one but has the mark." Some whispering had been going on in different parts of the room; but this silenced it. You might have heard a pin drop. The words seemed to make an impression on the coroner: they and Abel Crew were both so earnest. "You assert also that the pills are not yours," spoke the coroner, who was known to be fond of desultory conversations while holding his inquests. "What proof have you of that?" "No proof; that is, no proof that I can advance, that would satisfy the eye or ear. But I am certain, by the look of them, that those were never my pills." All this took the jury aback; the coroner also. It had seemed to some of them an odd thing that Hester Reed should have swallowed two or three of the pills at once without their entailing an ache or a pain, and that one each had poisoned the babies. Perkins the butcher observed to the coroner that the box must have been changed since Mrs. Reed helped herself from it. Upon which the coroner, after pulling at his whiskers for a moment as if in thought, called out for Mrs. Reed to return. But when she did so, and was further questioned, she only kept to what she had said before, strenuously denying that the box _could_ have been changed. It had never been touched by any hands but her own while it stood in its place on the press, and had never been removed from it at all until she took it downstairs on the past Tuesday night. "Is the room where this press stands your own sleeping-room?" asked the coroner. "No, sir. It's the other room, where my three children sleep." "Could these children get to the box?" "Dear no, sir! 'Twould be quite impossible." "Had any one an opportunity of handling the box when you took it down on Tuesday night?" went on the coroner after a pause. "Only Mrs. Dovey, sir. Nobody else was there." "Did she touch it?" "She laid hold of it to look at the pills." "Did you leave her _alone_ with it?" "No, sir. Leastways--yes, I did for a minute or so, while I went into the back'us to get the sugar and a saucer and spoon." "Had she the box in her hands when you returned?"