"Ormsby, I am one of those men, too few in number, I am sorry to think, who decline to accept assumptions in lieu of facts. You say this fellow has confessed to the robbery. Well and good; let him be punished for it. But to assume that he is, therefore, and as if it were a matter of course, guilty of the more heinous crime seems to me monstrous in the extreme." "If you were a man of the world, Drelincourt, instead of being the student and recluse you are, you wouldn't talk such rot--for I can call it by no other name. So convinced are I and my brother magistrates of Gumley's guilt that we have unanimously made up our minds to commit him to the next assizes on the double charge of robbery and murder." "Iv that case, there's nothing more to be said," remarked Drelincourt with a shrug, as he turned away. "My errand is discharged; I will no longer intrude," said Ormsby. He made a sweeping, old fashioned bow, and then marched out, his nose in the air, and the color in his cheeks a shade deeper than when he had entered the room. Wicks shut the door behind him, and the next moment the first dinner bell sounded. "I will follow you in a few moments," said Drelincourt to his wife. "I have a note to write which must be despatched at once." He waited with a nonchalant air, a couple of fingers of each hand thrust into his waistcoat pockets, till she had gone, then he sank wearily into a chair. "At last the sword has fallen! For twenty long years it has been suspended over my head, and now the hair that held it has snapped. Fate guides our footsteps through a blind labyrinth, and brings us to the exit by ways we wot not of. But it may be that all is not yet lost. Some loophole of escape there may be still, though all is dark at present. Through what mischance has Gumley been caught in the toils after all these years? Why has he confessed to the robbery of the jewels? Why---- But these are idle questions. I must see Rodd and get him to fathom this mystery for me." Therewith he rang the bell. "Tell Mr. Marsh that I wish to see him at once in the library," he said to Wicks. Then to himself he added: "In all the world there is but one soul to whom I can freely talk and from whom I have no concealments." When he entered the library, three minutes later, he found Roden Marsh already there. "So--you have heard," he said, as he shut the door, and paused for a moment before advancing. "I can read your news in your face." "I wanted to be the first to tell it you, so that you might be prepared; but I could find no opportunity of seeing you alone." "My dear Rodd, night and day for twenty years I have never been otherwise than prepared. But tell me what it is you have heard. At present I am altogether in the dark. That Gumley has been arrested, and has confessed to the robbery of my first wife's jewels--so much I have been told, but beyond that I know nothing."