That was all. Mr. Greatorex bowed to the coroner and gave place to another witness. A little dark woman in black, with an old-fashioned black chip bonnet on, and silver threads beginning to mix with her black hair; but her eyebrows were very black still. Certainly no two women could present a greater contrast in appearance than she and Miss Rye, although they were sisters. "Your name is Julia Jones," began the coroner's man, who knew Mrs. Jones intimately in private life. "Yes, it _is_ Julia Jones," emphatically replied the lady, in a tart voice, and with an accent on the "Jones," as if the name grated on her tongue. And Mrs. Jones was sworn. After some preliminary evidence, touching Mr. Ollivera's previous visits to her, and the length of time he had stayed, which she entered upon of her own accord and was not checked, Mrs. Jones was asked what she knew of the calamity. How it was first brought to her knowledge. "The first was through my sister, Alletha Rye shrieking out from the first-floor landing below, a little before seven o'clock on Tuesday morning," responded Mrs. Jones, in the same tart tone; which was, in fact, habitual to her. "I was in my bedroom, the front room on the second floor, dressed up to my petticoat, and out I flew, thinking she must be on fire. She said something about Mr. Ollivera, and I ran down, and saw him lying in the chair. Jones's nephew, in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, and his face all in a lather, for he was shaving, got into the room when I did." "When did you see the deceased last, Mrs. Jones?" was the next question put, after the witness had described the appearance of the room, the pistol on the carpet, the blotted note on the table, the quantity of oil in the lamp, and so forth. "When did I see him last? why on the Monday afternoon, when he came in from court," responded Mrs. Jones. "I was crossing the hall at the foot of the stairs, between the parlour and the shop, as he came in. He looked tired, and I said so; and he answered that he had been about all day, in the court and elsewhere, and _was_ tired. That's when I saw him last: never after, till I saw him in his chair, dead." "You heard nothing of his movements on that evening?" "I wasn't likely to hear it, seeing I went out as soon as the shop was shut. Before it, in fact, for I left Jones's nephew to put up the shutters. Old Jenkins is dying, as all the parish knows, and I went to sit with him and take him some beef-tea. Jones's nephew, he went out too, to his debating club, as he calls it. And precious debating it must be," continued Mrs. Jones, with additional tartness, "if the debaters are all as green and soft as he! Alletha Rye, she was at work at Mrs. Wilson's: and so, as ill-luck had it, all the house was out." "Except your servant, Susan Marks," observed one of the jury. "She was left at home to keep house, we hear."