blood-stained poignard still dangling in his fingers. "A mighty excellent notion!" [Sidenote: The assassin.] Kneeling down by the wounded man's side, he wrenched open the clenched fingers of his right hand, and thrust the hilt of the dagger between them. "Yes," he muttered; "that will tell its own tale. And now for the Thatched House." Returning to the window, and craning out his neck, Rumsey spent several minutes, first in consideration of the projecting corbels and cornices, and the stout web work of ivy covering the walls; then drawing his head back again, he fell to scowling contemplation of his lamed foot. Once on terra firma, nothing, he knew, was easier than to find the postern; and if by ill luck it should be locked, the trees bordering the walls on their inner side would assist him to scale them, and so away across the Rye by the bridges. Only the first step was the hard one; but the guilty man knew there was no choice for him but to grapple with it; and after one or two clumsy failures, he succeeded in at last obtaining a firm footing on the window ledge. [Sidenote: An unexpected appearance.] Scarcely had he accomplished this feat, than a flash of light broke across his eyes, with such startling suddenness that it caused him to sway forward, and he would have dropped headlong into the moat, had he not stretched out both hands, clinging for dear life to the stout old ivy trails; and by a wrench and a twist that for some hours afterward he did not forget, held on by the jutting stone-work of the window, staring helplessly into the room at the figure of a man, who stood lantern in hand, in the arch of the door facing him. "Hullo!" he cried. "The same to you, colonel," laughingly returned the voice of Lawrence Lee. "What in the name of Fortune are you about there? Marry! 'Tis an odd time of night to be practising gymnastics!" "Lend me a hand for mercy's sake!" gasped Rumsey, "or I shall fall and break my neck." "And it would be such a pity that, eh, colonel?" laughed Lee, as he ran forward. "Have with you then." "Great heaven!" he cried, stumbling in his haste head foremost across the body of Goodenough; "what have we here? Sheriff Goodenough!" he continued in horrified amazement, as he turned his lantern light on the pale still face, and perceived the pool of blood it lay weltering in. "Dead? Murdered?" Rumsey shrugged his shoulders with an air of cool indifference. "Man!" shouted Lee, turning on Rumsey. "What is the meaning of this?" "Pooh! nonsense!" replied Rumsey, as well as his almost spent breath permitted him. "Dead! Well, like enough; but murdered--Here, hi! lend a hand, can't you?" [Sidenote: Saved for the gallows.] Lawrence complied; but the hand he placed at Rumsey's disposal was no very gentle one, and he hauled him to the floor like a sack of bones. "Speak, man!" he cried.