At the police-station, the prisoners were stripped and examined. There was no sign of a sword wound on either of them, nor any hole or rent that might have been made by a sword-thrust through their clothes. That same day the prisoners were taken to Edlingham, and everything was arranged as during the burglary. But Mr. Buckle could not identify either of them, nor could Miss Buckle. The case against the prisoners was certainly not strong at this stage. Moreover, there was this strong presumption in their favour--that people engaged in such an outrage as burglary and wounding with intent would not have returned openly to their homes within a few hours of the commission of the crime. When brought before the magistrates for preliminary inquiry, the prisoners found fresh evidence adduced against them. The police, in the person of Mr. Harkes, had traced foot-marks going through the grounds of the vicarage, and out on to the Alnwick road. Plaster casts were produced of these footmarks, also the boots and clogs of the prisoners, and all were found to correspond. The chisel found in the vicarage had been traced to Murphy. His brother-in-law, old Redpath, had been induced to identify it as his property. This admission had been obtained from Redpath by a clever ruse, as the police called it, although they had really set a trap for him, and he had owned to the chisel although it was not his at all. Another damning fact had been elicited in the discovery of a scrap of newspaper in the lining of Murphy's coat (which, as we know, was not Murphy's, but Redpath's), which fragment fitted exactly into the newspaper picked up in the vicarage. This scrap of paper was unearthed from the coat on the 16th of February, by an altogether independent and unimpeachable witness, Dr. Wilson, the medical gentleman who attended the Buckles. It may be observed that the coat itself had been in the possession of the police for just nine days; so had the original newspaper.