Being near Winchester, the ancient capital of Saxon England, it was asserted by archaeologists that Jarlchester, sleepy and dull as it was in the nineteenth century, had once been an important place. Jarl means Earl, and Chester signifies a camp; so those wiseacres asserted that the name Jarlchester meant the Camp of the Earl; from which supposition arose a fable that Jarl Godwin had once made the little town his head-quarters when in revolt against pious Edward who built St. Peter's of Westminster. As Godwin, however, according to history, never revolted against the King, and generally resided in London, the authenticity of the story must be regarded as doubtful. Nevertheless, Jarlchester folks firmly believed in it, and sturdily held to their belief against all evidence to the contrary, however clearly set forth. They were a sleepy lot as a rule, those early-to-bed and early-to-rise country folk; for nothing had occurred for years to disturb their sluggish minds, so they had gradually sunk into a state of somnolent indifference, with few ideas beyond the weather and the crops. Then Jarlchester, unimportant since Anglo-Saxon times, suddenly became famous throughout England on account of "The Mystery," and the mystery was "A Murder." On this moist November morning, when the whole earth shivered under a bleak gray sky, a crowd, excited in a dull, bovine way, was assembled in front of the "Hungry Man Inn," for in the commercial-room thereof, now invested with a ghastly interest, an inquest was being held on the body of a late guest of the inn, and the bucolic crowd was curious to know the verdict. A long, low-ceilinged apartment this commercial-room, with a narrow deal table covered with a glaring red cloth down the centre; four tall windows looking out on to the crowd, who, with faces flattened against the glass, peered into the room. A jury of lawful men and true, much impressed with a sense of their importance, seated at the narrow table; at the top thereof, the coroner, Mr. Carr, bluff, rosy-faced, and eminently respectable. Near him a slender young man, keen-eyed and watchful, taking notes (reported by the crowd outside to be a London detective); witnesses seated here, there, and everywhere among eager spectators; but the body! oh, where was the body, which was the culminating point of interest in the whole gruesome affair? The crowd outside was visibly disappointed to learn that the body was lying upstairs in a darkened room, and the jury, half eager, half fearful, having inspected it according to precedent, were now assembled to hear all procurable evidence as to the mode in which the living man of two days ago became the body upstairs. _First Witness_.--Boots. Short, grimy, bashful; pulls forelock stolidly, shuffles with his feet, is doubtful as to aspirates, and speaks hoarsely, either from cold--it is raining--or from nervousness either of the jury or of the body; perhaps both.