"Do you consider the consequences of your words? Do you consider that you are bringing a charge of the gravest character against one of the company's servants?" "I am willing to be put upon my oath, if necessary. The man who came to that door a minute since is the same whom I saw talking with Mr. Dwerrihouse on the Blackwater platform. Were he twenty times the company's servant, I could say neither more nor less." The chairman turned again to the guard. "Did you see Mr. Raikes in the train, or on the platform?" he asked. Somers shook his head. "I am confident Mr. Raikes was not in the train," he said; "and I certainly did not see him on the platform." The chairman turned next to the secretary. "Mr. Raikes is in your office, Mr. Hunter," he said. "Can you remember if he was absent on the fourth instant?" "I do not think he was," replied the secretary; "but I am not prepared to speak positively. I have been away most afternoons myself lately, and Mr. Raikes might easily have absented himself if he had been disposed." At this moment the under-secretary returned with the day-book under his arm. "Be pleased to refer, Mr. Raikes," said the chairman, "to the entries of the fourth instant, and see what Benjamin Somers's duties were on that day." Mr. Raikes threw open the cumbrous volume, and ran a practised eye and finger down some three or four successive columns of entries. Stopping suddenly at the foot of a page, he then read aloud that Benjamin Somers had on that day conducted the 4.15 express from London to Crampton. The chairman leaned forward in his seat, looked the under-secretary full in the face, and said, quite sharply and suddenly,-- "Where were _you_, Mr. Raikes, on the same afternoon?" "_I_, sir?" "You, Mr. Raikes. Where were you on the afternoon and evening of the fourth of the present month?" "Here, sir,--in Mr. Hunter's office. Where else should I be?" There was a dash of trepidation in the under-secretary's voice as he said this; but his look of surprise was natural enough. "We have some reason for believing, Mr. Raikes, that you were absent that afternoon without leave. Was this the case?" "Certainly not, sir. I have not had a day's holiday since September. Mr. Hunter will bear me out in this." Mr. Hunter repeated what he had previously said on the subject, but added that the clerks in the adjoining office would be certain to know. Whereupon the senior clerk, a grave, middle-aged person, in green glasses, was summoned and interrogated. His testimony cleared the under-secretary at once. He declared that Mr. Raikes had in no instance, to his knowledge, been absent during office hours since his return from his annual holiday in September. I was confounded. The chairman turned to me with a smile, in which a shade of covert annoyance was scarcely apparent. "You hear, Mr. Langford?" he said. "I hear, sir; but my conviction remains unshaken."