"Yes, it is. You can believe or disbelieve it as you like. I left him by the Waggoner's Pond, and that was the last I saw of him alive or dead. On my way back to the house I was attacked by some tramps who took my watch. They wrenched my links off--that is one pair, the missing pair--and were about to take the other when they heard someone coming and made off. I returned here and told Cass as little as I could, in case he might see fit to stop my marriage with his sister." "I wish to Heaven I had stopped it!" Mr. Cass said, fiercely. "I don't believe a word you say!" CHAPTER XXIII. STILL IN DOUBT. Marshall, seeing that the two men were silent, began to recover his self-command. "I see you don't believe me. Perhaps there is no reason why you should. But I swear I do not know who killed Jenner. If I had known I should have got that bill out of him." "Oh!" said Geoffrey. "And you would have condoned his sin so long as he gave you back the evidence of your own." "I would. Every man for himself in this world. I would have told him, whosoever he was, that if he did not give me back the bill I would denounce him to the police. But I have not the least idea who the guilty person is." He wiped his face. "And all these years I have lived in misery, fearing daily and hourly that the bill would turn up. I knew Roper would not spare me if he got possession of it." "No wonder," remarked Heron, "seeing how badly you treated his daughter Elsa." The culprit had the grace to blush. "Elsa Roper was never a penny the worse by me," he said. "When I used to go to her father's office to procure money she chose to fall in love with me. I made capital out of that, as I do out of most things." "Don't be so shameless, man!" interposed his brother-in-law, sharply. Marshall sickened him with his fluent villainy. "Oh, you were always a Puritan," sneered Marshall. "However, that is neither here nor there. I let the girl believe that I cared for her in order to get her father to part with his money, but I never intended to marry her." "And she died of a broken heart," put in Heron.