‘What! You had no light burning long after midnight—you set no candle in one of the upper rooms for a signal—you never gave your accomplice a lodging in one of the attics? Why, I tell you, man, I found the bed he had slept in—the ashes of the fire that warmed him—his empty brandy bottle! If you want to go scot-free yourself, or to be paid handsomely for your candour, the truth will best serve you, Mr. Wincher. Who was the man you kept hidden in that upstair room at Cedar House?’ ‘I can but repeat what I have said, sir. I never admitted any living creature to that house surreptitiously. I never lodged so much as a strange cat in those upstair rooms. How could I? Miss Lucille always kept the key of the upper staircase.’ ‘Pshaw! What was to prevent your having a duplicate key?’ exclaimed Lucius impatiently. This old man’s protestations sounded like truth; but Lucius told himself they could not be truth. After all, when a man has once made things easy with his conscience—settled with himself that he will not attempt to square his life by the right angle of fair dealing—there need be nothing so very difficult in lying. It can only be a matter of invention and self-possession. ‘Come, Mr. Wincher,’ said Lucius, after a pause; ‘believe me, candour will best serve your interests. I know the name of your accomplice, and I am ready to believe that you were ignorant of the darker purpose which brought him to that house. I am ready to believe that you had no hand in the attempt to poison your old master.’ ‘Sir,’ said Jacob Wincher, with another solemn appeal to the Highest of all Judges, ‘all that you say is incomprehensible to me. I admitted no one. I know nothing of any attempt to injure my old master, whom I have served faithfully and with affection for five-and-twenty years. I know no more of the robbery than I told you when I informed you of it. There is some mistake, sir.’ ‘What, will you tell me that my own senses have deceived me—that I did not see the door opened and the light in the upper window that night? Who was there in the house to open that door or set that beacon light in the window except you—or Miss Sivewright?’ Or Miss Sivewright! What if it was Lucille who opened the door—Lucille who gave the man shelter in that upper room? Was she not capable of any act, however desperate, for the sake of the father she loved with such a morbid affection? If he came to her as a suppliant, entreating for shelter, pleading perhaps for her influence to bring about a reconciliation between himself and his father, would this fond confiding daughter refuse to admit him? Would she foresee the danger of his presence in that house; or could her innocent mind conceive so deep a guilt as that of the would-be parricide?