The decrepit hero of the overweening hallucination had hobbled into the witness-box meanwhile. Carlton had not come in contact with him since the morning before the fire, and he little thought that his last conversation with the sexton was about to come up in evidence against him. Yet such was the case. Old Busby had been responsible for the lighting of the church. He had kept the paraffin and filled the lamps. But in the month of June the lamps were rarely needed. They had not been lighted on the Sunday before the fire. There would have been even less occasion for them--by one minute--the following Sunday. And yet, on the Saturday morning, the prisoner had ordered the witness to see that the lamps were full! So Busby deposed; and the point seemed of sinister significance. It took the prisoner plainly by surprise: the circumstance had escaped his memory. In a minute, however, he had recalled it in detail; and his cross-examination, though provocative of some mirth, and curtailed in consequence, was by no means ineffectual. "You remember when the lamps went out, through your neglect, in the middle of even-song?" "I'm like to remember it. That was when I swallowed the frog." The court laughed, but not the prisoner, who was too much in earnest even to smile. "I reminded you pretty often about the lamps after that?" "Ay, you were for ever at me about 'em." "Now, on the morning you mention, where was I when I told you to go and fill the lamps?" The sexton thought. "In your study, sir." "And what were you doing there? Do you remember?" "I do that! I was telling you about the frog." This time the prisoner smiled himself. "And did I listen to you?" he demanded, a sudden change upon his face, as though the act of smiling had put him in pain. "No, that you didn't," the old man grumbled; "you fared as though you didn't hear." "So I told you to go away and fill your lamps," said Carlton, sadly, "even though it was Midsummer Day! I have finished with the witness." He was as one who had brilliantly parried a deadly thrust, and yet received a secret wound in the onset. He rested his head upon his hand to hide his pain, and only raised it at the sound of James Preston's voice putting the first question from the bench: "As sexton, did you keep the key of the church?" "In the old days I did, sir; but that's been open church ever since Mr. Carlton come." "You mean that the church was open day and night?" "To be sure it was." "Thank you," said Preston hastily, as though glad to relapse into silence. Carlton did not add to his embarrassment by a glance, but his heart throbbed with gratitude for the goodwill he could no longer question. "_Did_ you fill the lamps?" asked the chairman as the witness was preparing to hobble from the box. "Yes, sir, I did."