The governor of her Majesty’s prison at Wainford was a certain Colonel Summerford; a gentleman, and a man of sound common sense. He had been governor for nearly twenty years, but during all that long experience he had never had so strange and puzzling an inmate as Harold Faradeane. Colonel Summerford knew the ordinary jail-bird by heart, and understood every song that bird could sing; but this man, charged with the murder of a woman in Hawkwood woods, scattered all the good colonel’s experiential theories and ideas, like chaff before the wind. In the first place, the colonel saw that his “new man” was a gentleman; and, secondly, that he was no fool, as some gentlemen--too many, alas!--often are. He felt greatly interested in him, and did his best to make him as comfortable as a prisoner committed for trial on a capital offence can be made. He gave him the largest and airiest cell, and, in fact, treated him as a man who, though accused, has not yet been found guilty. Mr. McAndrew arrived at the prison about half an hour after Faradeane’s return, and found the colonel walking up and down his office in deep thought. “Good-morning, colonel,” said the detective, putting his head in at the door and touching his hat with his forefinger in farmer fashion. “Ah! is that you, Mr. McAndrew? Come in,” responded the governor. “You have just come from court, I suppose? You have got a more interesting case than country ones usually are, eh?” “Yes,” assented Mr. McAndrew; “it is rather interesting.” “Confound the man!” exclaimed the colonel. “I wish they hadn’t brought him here,” and he tugged at his mustache. “Gives you a lot of trouble?” “Not a bit. That’s just it. Look here, McAndrew, I can’t make him out.” “No, colonel?” “No; and I’m an old hand at ’em, too. I didn’t think there could be a case that would puzzle me--I mean so far as the man goes. I’m used to reading them right off the reel; but this man Faradeane baffles me.” “Ah,” commented the detective, thoughtfully; “doesn’t behave like the usual run, then, colonel?” “Not a bit,” said the governor, testily. “Some of them are sullen, others are hysterical, and others again dogged and taciturn; while I’ve seen some half-mad. Now, this man just takes the whole thing as quietly as if there was nothing extraordinary in it. If the evidence was not so black I should be ready to swear that he is innocent. It is black, isn’t it?” McAndrew nodded. “About as black as it could be,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “And you can make nothing of it--of him?” asked the colonel. “It isn’t my way to be overcurious about my prisoners,” he added, half-apologetically, “but I will own to feeling a deep interest in this Mr. Faradeane.” McAndrew nodded. “A good many other people do that,” he said. “I do, for one. I don’t know yet whether he’s guilty or not; but I should like to know, if he is guilty, why he did it. By the way, colonel, I want to see him.” The governor pulled up short and frowned.