bear on it which helps to keep the members of the Detective Force up to their present high standard. On such a question as spiritualistic manifestations, the sceptics require the exclusion of every opportunity for fraud, even when the high priest is a man of the reputation of Sir Conan Doyle; and a prisoner under the shadow of the gallows, who speaks through his counsel, is entitled to demand the exclusion of every possibility of fraud, even when a man of the standing of Detective Piggott is in charge. It is almost impossible to believe, apart altogether from the question of Ross’s guilt, or the question of the supposed identity of the hairs, as deposed to by Mr. Price, that the hairs on the blankets could have been Alma Tirtschke’s. As was mentioned during the legal argument, golden hairs do not shine out conspicuously on a reddish brown blanket when they are well imbedded in the fabric. Yet when Detective Piggott picked up this reddish brown blanket in the darkness of a vestibule, a fortnight after it had left the wine saloon, after it had been used for packing pictures on the day of the removal, after it had been put out to air on a line, after it had been in use for a fortnight at Maidstone—all of which was sworn to—his quick eye immediately detected “the sheen of golden hairs” on it. They must, therefore, have been lying loosely on it. It would surely have been fair that he and his men should have immediately started to pick them off—and in the presence and with the knowledge of Ross. It was hardly in accordance with the fairness with which the case was investigated throughout, to defer the picking off until the blankets had been placed, on the following day, over the screen in the Government Analyst’s room. Nothing was known by Ross of the discovery of the hairs until the evidence was given, a fortnight later, at the inquest. It is also remarkable that Piggott, who, according to his own testimony, had the case against Ross “well in hand” on December 31, never even went into the cubicle on that day to see if it would reveal anything, although he knew the place was to be vacated and dismantled on that very evening. On the trial, evidence for the defence was given that Mrs. Tom Ross and her sister, Miss Alice Ballantyne, had gone into the cubicle on the Wednesday before the murder, and had “done” their hair in it, each letting her hair down and combing it. Alice Ballantyne’s hair bore the strongest resemblance to Alma Tirtschke’s, and leaving out the improbability of the hairs remaining on the blanket for a fortnight, it was far more likely that 27 hairs would come out under the operation of combing than that they would come out from a girl simply lying on the blanket. Something might have been said on this point by Ross had he been apprised at the time of “the sheen of golden hairs.”