Presently they were joined by Squire Barker, a sober, elderly, clerical-looking lawyer, dressed in a somewhat rusty suit of black, serious-minded, whose lugubrious manner was not calculated to infuse a spirit of cheer into hearts that were sinking. The county attorney, who was to conduct the case for the people of the State, a youthful attorney, of comparatively recent admission to practice, bustled about as became a functionary with the burden of an important matter upon his shoulders. The court-room, save for the buzzing of innumerable flies upon the uncleaned window-panes, was still as a church when His Honour announced that the court was now open for whatsoever matters the county attorney had to bring before it. After the usual formality of acquainting His Honour officially of the matter in hand, which matter His Honour was already as much acquainted with as a thousand and one busy tongues of gossip could make him, the likewise formal answer of “Not guilty” was returned, and, without further delay, Colonel Witham was called to the stand. The colonel, fully awake to his opportunity, took the stand rather pompously, thrust a well-filled, expansive waistband to the front, whence there dangled from a waistcoat pocket a ponderous gold chain, plentifully adorned with trinkets, in the handling of which, as he testified, a large seal ring on a finger of his right hand was ostentatiously displayed. Yes,—in answer to questions,—he was the lessee of the Bayview Hotel on the 10th of September last, on which day it was burned to the ground; and, if he did say it, there was no better conducted hotel along the shores of Samoset Bay. Suggestion by His Honour that he please answer the questions as put, and reserve his own personal opinions and convictions to himself, received by the colonel with evident surprise and some little loss of dignity. Then the colonel detailed, so far as he knew them, the events of the night of the fire; how he was first aroused by the cry of “Fire!” and how the first persons he encountered—within his very hotel, in fact—were the accused; how the smoke was even then pouring up from the basement windows, and that upon investigation he had found the whole basement floor to be on fire, so that it was already far beyond control. Then there followed a detailed account of the fire, of the destruction of this section and that, and, finally, the utter collapse and ruin of the entire structure, with all that it had contained. The colonel did the scene full justice in his description, making an unmistakable impression on the minds of the assembled townsfolk. Asked if he had seen any suspicious characters in or about the hotel on the day or night of the fire, the colonel said he had not; nor had any stranger who had not been subsequently accounted for come ashore from the steamers on that day.