He pressed with a passionate insistence for the extremest rigour of the law against us both, and it was plain from the angry murmurs of the court that this appeal to the national sentiment had told heavily against me. Then he called his witnesses. The first three were from the Basso Porto--fit inhabitants of the place. They told substantially the same story, and all swore that I was engaged in an angry broil with Grammont and another Englishman whom they did not know. They admitted that the conversation was carried on in English, but my advocate's half-contemptuous cross-examination could not set aside the fact that a quarrel, in which I had taken some part, had taken place. After these three, Matthew Hollis was called, and the man whom I had watched upon the quay presented himself. He told, in fair though foreign-sounding Italian, a plain story. He had been an engine-fitter, and had worked in France and Italy. He was settled down in business on his own account in Naples, and on the day to which his story related had work to do at Posilipo. On his way thither he observed Grammont and myself, and suspected me of evil designs and watched me. He told how I tried to get rid of him by sending him upon a message to the Caffe d' Italia, and how he declined to leave the place. He related how, having seen us part, he had gone his way to Posilipo, and how, returning thence in the evening with a workman of his own, he had found the dead body of Grammont on the road, and had found me lying insensible at a little distance from it. A close cross-examination only served to prove the absolute solidity of this man's story. Then an officer produced a bundle, and, untying it, displayed the shirt I had worn, with the rust-coloured mark of a hand distinct upon the front. 'Did that mark correspond with the size of the hand of the murdered man?' So asked the accusatore pubblico. 'Yes,' answered the official, 'accurately.' 'Did it correspond with the hand of the prisoner Giovanni Câlvotti?' 'No,' he responded, and stated truly that I was a man of much larger build than Grammont, and my hand at least an inch longer. So far as I was-concerned the case closed with his evidence, and the case against Fornajo was then gone into. There is no need to go over that ground: again. All that was proved against him was; the possession of Grammont's money. He failed totally to establish an alibi, and so far as participation in the crime went the evidence; seemed clear enough against him. Then arose my advocate, with pale face and coal-black eyes.