"It's a coincidence, that's all," retorted Gebb, "and you know very well in our profession there's no end of coincidences, though if you write them in a book people tell you they're impossible. You can't accuse any one of the three of killing the old woman, as they were all in the lecture hall the whole evening. You know all about Ferris, and Miss Wedderburn; well, it couldn't have been them. Mr. Basson was lecturing; it couldn't have been him. Mr. Alder was looking after the money and the house, so as to get plenty of cash in for his friend; so it couldn't have been him. If not them, who is guilty?" "Well, Dean must be the criminal." "I don't believe it," replied Gebb, obstinately. "And if he is, he'll not be hanged; for old Nick himself couldn't hunt him out. By the way, Simon, what kind of a man was he to look at--to the naked eye, so to speak?" "I don't know what he'll be like now," replied Parge, briskly; "but he was uncommonly good-looking in the dock, I can tell you. Just the man to take a woman's fancy: tall, and dark and smiling." "Any particular mark?" asked Gebb, professionally. "Well, he wasn't scarred or scratched in any way that I know of," replied Parge, reflectively, "but he had a frown." "Get along! Every one's got a frown," said Gebb, in a disgusted tone. "Not of his sort," was Parge's answer. "Since sitting here, Absalom, I've been reading a heap of books I never read before. Amongst others one called 'Redgauntlet,' by a baronet, Sir Walter Scott. Know it?" "No, I don't. What has it got to do with Dean?" "There was a fellow in it," said Parge, following his own reflections, "as had a horseshoe mark over his nose when he frowned. Quite queer it was." "Must have been," said Gebb, derisively. "And has Dean a horseshoe?" "No. But when he scowls, or frowns, like this"--here Parge made a hideous face--"he's got a queer mark, deep as a well and quite straight, between his eyebrows. I'd know him from among a thousand by it. Seems to cut his forehead in two like. If you see a man with a mark like that when he's in a rage, Absalom, just you nab him, for that's Dean." "Stuff!" said Gebb, impatiently. "Lots of men wrinkle up into lines when they get out of temper. I've seen foreheads like Clapham Junction for lines." "Not so deep," answered Parge, shaking his head, "and not straight down between the eyes. Most men frown in lines which run across the forehead when they raise their eyebrows like; but Dean draws everything up to a deep mark as dips just between the eyebrows and on to the nose. It's the queerest mark I ever saw; and whatever disguise he puts on he can't smooth that furrow out. A baby could tell him by it." "Hum!" said Gebb, who had been thinking. "Now you come to talk of it, Simon, that young Ferris has a mark like that, but not very deep."