End on the day before the murder: but, then, it was very pertinently asked: What earthly reason had Reuben Platt for taking the life of either of the murdered men and so putting in peril his own? And to this very searching question no one could find a sufficient answer. For many a month after that tragic day in April wherever men and women foregathered there was but one topic discussed, one eternal question propounded, and Jim and I lived in an agony of apprehension. We were loth to tell what we knew and yet we knew not what mischief our silence might entail. On one point we were clearly resolved: if any man's life or liberty were clearly imperilled then, come what might, it was our clear duty to declare the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Two considerations closed our mouths. First and foremost I hated the very thought of having the name of my Miriam bandied about, blazoned in every newspaper, on the lips of every soaker in every pot house from Stalybridge to Huddersfield. Secondly, though of course of this I could have no certainty but only the very strongest suspicion, it seemed certain that the hand of either Ephraim or of Daft Billy had struck the cruel and fatal blows. And of Ephraim and Billy there was neither sign nor sound. They had vanished and left no traces. So engrossed was everyone in that eternal riddle, Pats or Platt, that to none did it occur to turn to Burnplatts for a solution of the mystery yet there it was assuredly to be found. Now I will confess that no consideration for Eph. o' Burnplatts sealed my lips. I had done him no harm, except, of course, that I had won the heart he coveted. I had rescued him from the snare that had been set for him by the Bradburys of Bill's o' Jack's; yet had he waylaid me by night and left me for dead on the Stanedge Moor. I don't think I am vindictive by nature, and I had certainly not nursed my wrath against him to keep it warm. I could forgive much to the man who had lost the maid I had won: was not that loss of itself punishment enough? But though we were commanded to love our enemies and pray for them that despitefully use us, I saw no reason for sheltering Ephraim from the vengeance of the law if it was Ephraim's hand that was stained with the blood of the murdered men. But was it? Was it not more likely that of Daft Billy? I tried to image in my mind what must or might have transpired when Billy, his ill-regulated passions aflame with the thought that Miriam had been vilely used, by whom he knew not nor reeked, burst into the room where Bill and Tom and Ephraim were at high words. Had Ephraim, maddened by the miscarriage of his schemes, attacked Billy? Had the old man and Tom sided with him? It was conjectured by many, from the fact that the old man's body was found in the kitchen and Tom's in the passage, that the murderers had found the father alone in the inn, had done him to death, after a desperate struggle--that a