The ease with which Cathy spoke to the official gentleman, the coolness with which she put down a pill-box on the green cloth before him, took the room by surprise. As Ann Dovey remarked, later, "She must ha' learnt that there manner in her travels with young Parrifer." "What is this?" questioned the coroner, curtly, picking up the box. "Perhaps you'll ask Mr. Crew whether he knows it, sir, before I say what it is," returned Cathy. The coroner had opened it. It contained seven pills; just the size of the other pills, and looking exactly like them. On the lid and on the box was the private mark spoken of by Abel Crew. "That is my box, sir; and these--I am certain of it--are my pills," spoke Abel, earnestly, bending over the shoulder of the first juryman to look into the box. "The box and the pills that I gave to Mrs. Reed." "And so they are, Abel Crew," rejoined Cathy, emphatically. "The week before last, which I was spending at home at father's, I changed the one pill-box for the other, inadvertent, you see"--with a nod to the coroner--"and took the wrong box away with me. And I wish both boxes had been in the sea before I'd done it." Cathy was ordered to give her account more clearly, and did so. She had been suffering from illness, accompanied by neuralgia, and a doctor at Tewkesbury had prescribed some pills for it, one to be taken occasionally. The chemist who made them up told her they contained arsenic. He was about to write the directions on the box, when Cathy, who was in a hurry, snatched it from him, saying she could not wait for that bother, flung down the money, and departed. This box of pills she had brought with her on her visit to her father's, lest she should find occasion to take one; and she had put it on the shelf of the press, side by side with the other pill-box, to be out of the way of the children. Upon leaving, she took up the wrong box inadvertently: carrying away Abel Crew's pills, leaving her own. There lay the explanation of the mystery of the fatal mistake. Mrs. Reed had not known that Cathy had any pills with her; the girl, who was just as light-headed as ever, not having chanced to mention it; and Cathy had the grace to dust the room herself whilst she was there.