“I can’t tell you, ’squire; I never see’d her arter she was got out of the window.” “Do you mean that she was the hired-girl of the family,—or had the old lady no help?” “I kinder think she was a boarder, like; one that paid her keepin’,” answered the witness, who was not a person to draw very nice distinctions, as the reader will have no difficulty in conceiving, from his dialect. “It seems to me I heer’n tell of another help in the Goodwin family—a sorter Jarman, or Irish lady.” “Was any such woman seen about the house this morning, when the ruins were searched?” “Not as _I_’ner. We turned over the brands and sticks, until we come across the old folks; then everybody seemed to think the work was pretty much done.” “In what state, or situation, were these remains found?” “Burnt to a crisp, just as you see ’em, ’squire, as I said afore; a pretty poor state for human beings to be in.” “But where were they lying, and were they near each other?” “Close together. Their heads, if a body can call them black lookin’ skulls heads, at all, almost touched, if they didn’t quite touch, each other; their feet lay further apart.” “Do you think you could place the skeletons in the same manner, as respects each other, as they were when you first saw them? But let me first enquire, if any other person is present, who saw these remains before they had been removed?” Several men, and one or two women, who were in attendance to be examined, now came forward, and stated that they had seen the remains in the condition in which they had been originally found. Selecting the most intelligent of the party, after questioning them all round, the coroner desired that the skeletons might be laid, as near as might be, in the same relative positions as those in which they had been found. There was a difference of opinion among the witnesses, as to several of the minor particulars, though all admitted that the bodies, or what remained of them, had been found quite close together; their heads touching, and their feet some little distance apart. In this manner then, were the skeletons now disposed; the arrangement being completed just as Dr. McBrain entered the court-room. The coroner immediately directed the witnesses to stand aside, while the physician made an examination of the crisped bones. “This looks like foul play!” exclaimed the doctor, almost as soon as his examination commenced. “The skulls of both these persons have been fractured; and, if this be anything near the positions in which the skeletons were found, as it would seem, by the same blow.”