"All that you really know of this matter," asked Mr. Millington-Bywater, "is that you chanced to turn up Lonsdale Passage, saw a man lying on the pavement and a ring close by, and that, being literally starving and desperate, you snatched up that ring and ran away as fast as you could?" "Yes--that is all," asserted Hyde. "Except that I had met a man, as I have already told you, at the end of the passage by which I entered." "You did not even know whether this man lying on the pavement was alive or dead?" "I thought he might be drunk," replied Hyde. "But after I had snatched up the ring I never thought at all until I had run some distance. I was afraid of being followed." "Now why were you afraid of being followed?" "I was famishing!" answered Hyde. "I knew I could get something, some money, on that ring, in the morning, and I wanted to stick to it. I was afraid that the man whom I met as I ran out of the passage, whom I now know to have been Mr. Viner, might follow me and make me give up the ring. And the ring meant food." Mr. Millington-Bywater let this answer sink into the prevalent atmosphere and suddenly turned to another matter. The knife which had been found in Hyde's possession was lying with certain other exhibits on the solicitor's table, and Mr. Millington-Bywater pointed to it. "Now about that knife," he said. "It is yours? Very well--how long have you had it?" "Three or four years," replied Hyde, promptly. "I bought it when I was touring in the United States, at a town called Guthrie, in Oklahoma. And," he added suddenly and with a triumphant smile as of a man who is unexpectedly able to clinch an argument, "there is a gentleman there who was with me when I bought it--Mr. Nugent Starr!" From the magistrate on his bench to the policeman at the door every person in court turned to look at the man to whom the prisoner pointed an out-stretched finger. And Mr. Pawle let out an irrepressible exclamation. "Good God!" he said. "The claimant fellow!" But Viner said nothing. He was staring, as everybody else was, at the man who sat by Methley. He, suddenly aware that Hyde had pointed to him, was obviously greatly taken aback and embarrassed--he looked sharply at the prisoner, knitted his brows, shook his head, and turning to Methley muttered something which no one else caught. Mr. Millington-Bywater looked at him and turned to his client. "You say there is a gentleman here--that gentleman!--who was with you when you bought that knife?" he asked. "A friend of yours, then?" "Well--we were playing in the same company," asserted Hyde. "Mr. Moreby-Bannister's company. He was heavy lead--I was juvenile. He knows me well enough. He was with me when I bought that knife in a hardware store in Guthrie." The magistrate's eye was on the man who sat by Methley, and there was a certain amount of irritation in it. And suddenly Methley whispered something to his companion and the man shyly but with a noticeable composure stood up.