now that the gardener must be the murderer, and Solomon Daisy predicted that he would be heard of. That is the whole story as told by Solomon Daisy, and Poe affirms that he perceived from this story: (1) That the steward Rudge first murdered the gardener; (2) that he then went to his master’s chamber and murdered him; (3) that he was interrupted by Rudge’s wife, whom he seized and held by the wrist to prevent her giving the alarm; (4) that he possessed himself of the booty, returned to the gardener’s room, exchanged clothes with him, put upon the corpse his own watch and ring, and secreted it where it was afterwards discovered at so late a period that the features could not be identified. WHERE POE FAILED Poe admits that his preconceived ideas were not entirely correct: The gardener was murdered, not before, but after his master; and that Rudge’s wife seized _him_ by the wrist, instead of his seizing _her_, has so much the air of a mistake on the part of Mr. Dickens that we can scarcely speak of our own version as erroneous. The grasp of a murderer’s bloody hand on the wrist of a woman _enceinte_ would have been more likely to produce the effect described (and this every one will allow) than the grasp of the hand of the woman upon the wrist of the assassin. We may, therefore, say of our supposition, as Talleyrand said of some cockney’s bad French—_que s’il ne soit pas Français assurément donc il le doit être_—that if we did not rightly prophesy, yet, at least, our prophecy should have been right. I have no hesitation in saying that this is largely a piece of pure mystification, another _Tale of the Grotesque and Arabesque_. It is conceivable that Poe guesses from Solomon Daisy’s story that the steward Rudge murdered the gardener and his master. It follows that the steward changed clothes with the murdered gardener, put upon the corpse his own watch and ring, and secreted it where it was afterwards discovered at so late a period that the features could not be identified. But that Poe should have guessed immediately after reading Solomon Daisy’s story that he seized and held by the wrist his wife to prevent her giving the alarm is beyond belief. ‘By the wrist’ are the three significant words, and they prove that Poe must have had before him when writing the parts of the novel up to and including chapter V. For it is in the fifth chapter that the first mention is made of the smear of blood on Barnaby’s wrist. We read there: They who knew the Maypole story, and could remember what the widow was, before her husband’s and his master’s murder, understood it well. They recollected how the change had come, and could call to mind that when her son was born, upon the very day the deed was known, he bore upon his wrist what seemed a smear of blood but half washed out. Near the beginning of chapter lxii., where Rudge is making his confession in prison, he says of his wife: