"I fear that would have little weight in a court of justice," I replied. "De Chevron is the murderer, and no one else," she persisted, doggedly. "But, my dear Claribel," said I, soothingly, "allowing that he is a wicked, heartless villain, just think for a moment how you would support your accusation in a court of law. A pedlar is found murdered in a ditch, and a gentleman of De Chevron's condition now in London, where he has been for the last week, is accused of the murder. Consider the absurdity of the idea." "How do you know he has been in London all the time?" asked my friend. "Well, I grant you, I did not see him go," said I; "but when a man gives out that he is going away from a place, and has not been seen by anyone since, especially when it is in a little village like this, where everybody knows everybody else's business, the probability is that he has left." "Do not be too sure," said Claribel. "We must examine into the affair." "Oh, that is easily done," said I; "but even should he not have departed, if he should have changed his mind and remained here, what does that prove? Besides, what motive could a gentleman have in taking the life of a poor, unknown, itinerant pedlar?" "To lay the blame on John Archer, his rival, and get him into trouble," was my friend's reply. "Do you not think him capable?" "I think him capable of anything that's bad," said I; "but that's not the point. You must, first of all, have reason enough on your side to prove that he did, which you have not. Look, now, at the evidence against young Archer. A young man returns home to his family after midnight, his clothes disordered and bloodstained, his gun discharged, and the butt end of it clotted with blood. When questioned, he is unable to give any satisfactory account of himself. Says he remembers nothing but having accepted one glass of wine from a pedlar. He relates that he woke up towards midnight and discovered that he had been sleeping for hours in the open air, near to the spot where the body of the pedlar is found on the day following.