“No; but, good gracious! you don’t mean to say that there’s anything wrong about the watch? It’s not—not a stolen one?” “I don’t know, but there was one exactly like this stolen that time that Anderson was killed.” In one swift flash of alarm, his face, before so rosy, became as white as the waistcoat covering his breast. Then he slowly examined the watch with a trembling hand, and finally stammered out— “I remember it, and this is not unlike it. But that’s nothing—hundreds of watches are as like as peas.” I differed with him there, and finally got him to go with me to the Office, at which he was detained, while I went in search of Anderson’s widow to see what she would say about the watch. If I had an opinion at all about the case at this stage, it was that the watch taken was not that of the murdered man. I could scarcely otherwise account for Burge’s demeanour. He appeared so surprised and innocent, whereas a man thus detected in the act of wearing such a thing, knowing its terrible history, could scarcely have helped betraying his guilt. My fear, then, as I made my way to the house of Anderson’s widow, was that she, woman like, would no sooner see the mark on the case than she would hastily declare it to be the missing watch. To avoid as far as possible a miscarriage of justice, I left the watch at the Office, carefully mixed up with a dozen or two more then in our keeping, one or two of which resembled it in appearance. I found the widow easily enough, and took her to the Office with me, saying simply that we had a number of watches which she might look at, with the possibility of finding that of her husband. The watches were laid out before her in a row, faces upward, and she slowly went over them with her eye, touching none till she came to that taken from Burge. Then she paused, and there was a moment’s breathless stillness in the room. “This ane’s awfu’ like it,” she said, and, lifting the watch, she turned it, and beamed out in delight as she recognised the sharp nick on the back of the case. “Yes, it’s it! Look at the mark I told you about.” She pointed out other trifling particulars confirming the identity, but practically the whole depended on exactly what had first drawn my attention to the watch—the nick on the case. Now dozens of watches might have such a mark upon them, and it was necessary to have a much more reliable proof before we could hope for a conviction against Burge on such a charge.