It seemed scarcely possible to hope that Herbert was not guilty. All the facts tended to the assumption that he was so. There was the ill-feeling known to have existed between himself and his brother: the quarrel and violence in the dining-room not many hours before, in which quarrel Herbert _had_ raised a knife upon him. "But for the entrance of the servant Joseph," said the people, one to another, "the murder might have been done then." Joseph had stopped evil consequences at the time, but he had not stopped Herbert's mouth--the threat he had uttered in his passion--still to be revenged. Terribly those words told now against Herbert Dare. Another thing that told against him, and in a most forcible manner, was the cloak. That he had put it on to go out; nay, had been seen to go out in it by the housemaid, was indisputable; and his brother was found lying on this very cloak. In vain Herbert protested, when before the magistrates and at the coroner's inquest, that he returned before leaving the gates, and had flung this cloak into the dining-room, finding it too hot that evening to wear. He obtained no credit. He had not been seen to do this; and the word of an accused man goes for little. All ominous, these things--all telling against him, but nothing, taking them collectively, as compared with his refusal to state where he was that night. He left the house between eight and nine, close upon nine, he thought; he was not sure of the exact time to a quarter of an hour; and he never returned to it until nearly two. Such was his account. But, where he had been in the interim, he positively refused to state. It was only his assertion, you see, against the broad basis of suspicion. Anthony Dare's death must have taken place, as testified by Mr. Glenn, somewhere about half-past eleven; who was to prove that Herbert at that time was not at home? "I was not," Herbert reiterated, when before the coroner. "I did not return home till between half-past one and two. The churches struck the half-hour as I was coming through the town, and it would take me afterwards some ten minutes to reach home. It must have been about twenty minutes to two when I entered." "But where were you? Where had you been? Where did you come from?" he was asked. "That I cannot state," he replied. "I was out upon a little business of my own; business that concerns no one but myself; and I decline to make it public." On that score nothing more could be obtained from him. The coroner drew his own conclusions; the jury drew _theirs_; the police had already drawn theirs, and very positive ones.