It was some three weeks after Mrs. Balfame's arrest that another blow fell. Dr. Anna's Cassie suddenly remembered that a fortnight or so before the murder Mrs. Balfame had called at the cottage one morning and asked permission to go into the living-room and write a note to the doctor. A moment or two after she had shut herself in, Cassie had gone out to the porch with her broom, and as she wore felt slippers and the front door stood open, she had made no noise. It was quite by accident that she had glanced through the window, and there she had seen Mrs. Balfame standing on a chair before a little cupboard in the chimney placing a bottle carefully between two other bottles. She had fully intended to tell her mistress of this strange performance, but as the doctor those days came home for but a few hours' sleep and too tired to be spoken to, not even taking her meals there, Cassie had postponed her little sensation and finally forgotten it. When she did recall the incident under the pressure of the general obsession, she told it to a friend, who told it to another, who again imparted it, so that in due course it reached the ears of the alert Mr. Broderick. It was then he informed the public of the lost glass of lemonade and all the incidents pertaining thereto that had come to his knowledge. Mrs. Balfame's slightly "absurd explanation" was emphasised. Once more the police were "on the job." The restored bottle was analysed and, ominously, found to contain plain water. Every bottle in the house of Mrs. Balfame was carried to the chemist. Mrs. Balfame laughed grimly at these sturdy efforts, but she knew that the story diminished her chance of acquittal. The public now condemned her almost to a man. The evidence would not be allowed in court,--Rush would see to that,--but every juror would have read it and formed his own opinion. Somewhat to her surprise Rush asked her for no explanation of this episode, and she thought it best not to volunteer one. To her other friends she dismissed the whole thing casually as a lie, no doubt inspired. As the skies grew blacker, however, her courage mounted higher. Knitting calmed her nerves, and she had many long and lonely hours for meditation. Her friends kept her supplied with all the new novels, but her mind was more inclined to the war books, which she read seriously for the first time. On the whole, however, she preferred to knit for the wretched victims, and to think. No one can suffer such a sudden and extreme change in his daily habits as a long sojourn in jail on the charge of murder without forming a new and possibly an astonished acquaintance with his inner self, and without undergoing what, superficially, appear to be strange changes, but are merely developments along new-laid tracks in sections of the brain hitherto regarded as waste lands.