the manner of Godfrey’s death would enable him to speak with equal certainty as to the actual murder. Here is a plausible enough theory of the relation between the witnesses and the manner in which Prance’s evidence was procured. Unfortunately there are considerable difficulties in the way of its acceptance. If Prance was enabled by the words which he heard Bedloe speak to place the incident of October 14 in his narrative, he was also enabled to make a connection with Bedloe himself at that point. As according to the hypothesis this was his only knowledge of the details of Bedloe’s information, he would have been eager to make the most of it. It would have been the first point for him to clutch. On the contrary, Prance did nothing of the kind. He did not mention Bedloe’s name at all. The question why he did not is, if this theory be true, unanswerable. Bedloe too went to the trouble of spending four valuable weeks in his search for a suitable instrument to bear out his story. If that was the case it is surely strange that he should not have attempted to make certain that the man whom he obtained at last should be more or less acquainted with the tale which he was to corroborate. To do this after the arrest would probably be very difficult, but as a previous step it would be by no means so hard. Oates and Bedloe had many disreputable friends, by profession Roman Catholics, who could have easily effected an introduction to Prance and have held conversation the meaning of which would after his arrest be plain. Instead of this Bedloe on the hypothesis preferred to run the risk of having his whole story contradicted. These are objections of weight; but a still greater lies in the nature of the evidence which Prance gave on his confession. He had been in a very cold dungeon for thirty-six hours at most, from the evening of December 21 to the morning of December 23. If he was unprepared for Bedloe’s charge, his mind must have been in a turmoil of conflicting emotions. Yet within this time he evolved a story so detailed, elaborate, connected, and consistent that he never afterwards found the need to alter it materially. For such a task phenomenal powers of memory, imagination, and coolness would be demanded. A man of Prance’s station, suddenly thrown into a horrible prison on a false charge, cannot be supposed to have been endowed with such a wealth of mental equipment. If he had possessed a tithe of the powers which in this case would have been necessary, he would have made sure of cementing a firm connection in his narrative between himself and Bedloe.