"I think he is safe now--and I may venture," murmured Victor, at the end of that time. He crept softly into the room, making a wide circle, and keeping himself completely in the shadow, till he was behind the sleeping baronet. Then he came towards the lamp-lit table. Amongst the scattered letters and papers, there stood a claret jug, a large carafe of water, and an empty glass. Victor drew close to the table, and listened for some moments to the breathing of the sleeper. Then he took a small bottle from his pocket, and dropped a few globules of some colourless liquid into the empty glass. Having done this, he withdrew from the apartment as silently as he had entered it. Twelve o'clock struck as he was leaving the terrace. "So," he muttered, "it is little more than three-quarters of an hour since I left the servants' hall. It would not be difficult to prove an _alibi_, with the help of a blundering village innkeeper." He did not attempt to leave the castle by the court-yard, which he knew would be locked by this time. He had made himself acquainted with all the ins and outs of the place, and had possessed himself of a key belonging to one of the garden gates. Through this gate he passed out into the park, climbed a low fence, and made his way into Raynham village, where the landlord of the "Hen and Chickens" was just closing his doors. "I have been told by the castle servants that you can give me a bed," he said. The landlord, who was always delighted to oblige his patrons in Sir Oswald's servants' hall and stables, declared himself ready to give the traveller the best accommodation his house could afford. "It's late, sir," he said; "but we'll manage to make things comfortable for you." So that night the surgeon slept in the village of Raynham. He, too, was worn out by the fatigue of the past twenty-four hours, and he slept soundly all through the night, and slept as calmly as a child. It was eight o'clock next morning when he went down the steep, old-fashioned staircase of the inn. He found a strange hubbub and confusion below. Awful tidings had just been brought from the castle. Sir Oswald Eversleigh had been found seated in his library, DEAD, with the lamp still burning near him, in the bright summer morning. One of the grooms had come down to the little inn, and was telling his story to all comers, when the pedlar came into the open space before the bar.