"He paid the first week's rent as soon as he was admitted to the house, and gave a sovereign towards the purchase of his provisions," was the answer. "What remained he settled for on the Monday, previous to his departure by the five o'clock train for Birmingham." "Who was he, witness? Where did he come from?" "I really cannot tell much about him," was Miss Rye's reply. "I understood him to say he was a traveller; his name, as he wrote it down for us, was Godfrey Pitman. He was laid up with a bad cold and relaxed throat all the time he stayed, and borrowed some books of me to read." There appeared to be no further scope for the exercise of the juror's powers; no possible loophole for bringing this departed Mr. Godfrey Pitman into connection with the death of Mr. Ollivera; and Miss Rye was allowed to depart. Little more evidence was to be gleaned. Mr. Kene, tendering evidence, spoke of his long intimacy with the deceased, and of their last interview, when he was just the same that he ever had been: calm, cheerful, earnest-purposed. He could not understand, he added, how it was possible for Mr. Ollivera to have laid violent hands on himself--unless, indeed, the headache, of which he had complained, had proceeded from some derangement of the functions of the brain, and induced temporary insanity. But this suggested theory was wholly incompatible with the letter that had been found, and with Mr. Bede Greatorex's testimony of the sane mind of the deceased when he quitted him. The jury shook their heads: keen-eyed Mr. Butterby, looking on unobtrusively from a remote nook of the room, shook his. The inquest drew to a close; the one fatal element in the evidence being the letter found on the table. The coroner and jury debated upon their verdict with closed doors, and only re-admitted the public when they had decided: It did not take them long. "Felo-de-se." In accordance with the customary usage, a mandate was issued for a night interment, without Christian rites; and the undertaker promised to be ready for that same night. The crowd filed out of the room, talking eagerly. That it was undoubtedly a case of self-murder, and that in the most unhappy sense of the word, none doubted. No, not one: even Mr. Kene began to waver. As they were dispersing hither and thither along the street, there came hastily up a young man in the garb of a clergyman. It was the Reverend Henry William Ollivera, brother of the deceased gentleman. He had just arrived by train. In as few words as possible, his cousin, Frank Greatorex, and Mr. Kene imparted to him some hasty particulars of the unhappy event. "He never did it," said the clergyman, solemnly. "Bede"--for at that moment Bede Greatorex joined the speakers--"how could you suffer them to bring in a verdict so horrible?"