Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/94

 "Does any one here remember a man, in a volunteer uniform, who went off just now by the down train?" This was my inquiry, addressed to the first person I met at the station—a porter, who referred me to the station clerk, to whom I put the same question. This man answered in the affirmative at once. His attention had been particularly directed to this volunteer, by his having required change for a five-pound note, at the last moment, as the train was going to start.

"For what place did he take his ticket?"

"Bristol."

"That man is a murderer," I said, "and must be arrested. If you telegraph at once to Bath, the message will be there long before the train, and he can be stopped."

And so this terrible experience—the particulars of which I have related just as they occurred—came to an end. The murderer was arrested at Bath, and on his being searched the hundred pounds—except the small sum which he had expended on his railway ticket—were found upon him. The evidence against him was in all points overwhelming. The body of poor Mr. Irwin was discovered in the little wood. I myself directed the search. When it was concluded I wandered away to the willow pond to look for the butterfly-net. One end of the stick was visible above the water, the other end being sunk by the weight of the metal ring which was attached to it.

There was no link wanting in the mass of proof. The evidence, which it was my part to give on the trial, was irresistible. Great attempts were made to shake it, to prove that I might easily have made a mistake of identity; and that such details as I had described could not have been visible through the telescope at such a distance. Opticians were consulted; experiments were made. It was distinctly proved that it was really possible for me to have seen all that I stated I had seen; and though there was much discussion raised about the case, and though some of the newspapers took it up, and urged that men's lives were not to be sacrificed to the whims of "an idle gentleman who chose to spend his afternoons in looking out of window through a spy-glass," the jury returned a verdict against the prisoner, and William Mason was convicted and hanged.

The reader may, perhaps, be sufficiently interested in the facts of this case to be glad to hear that the poor woman, who was the innocent cause of the commission of this ghastly crime, did get her hundred pounds after all, though not from the hands of Mr. James Irwin.

" have often wondered why I did not marry Ashley Graham when I told you that he asked me," Rose Mantell said to me one evening, as we sat by the open window looking out on the moonlight quivering over the lake, and silvering the old mountains like a fine hoar frost spread over them; "and now you want to know why I am going to America, where I have no friends—at least, none you know of. Well, I have always put you off when you have questioned me, but to-night I will make a clean breast of it, as people say, and tell you my whole story."

You remember when we lived in Percy-street, my brother James and I? and you remember how poor we were, and what a miserable thing we made of it together, he with his painting and I with my music? We did not hide things from you as we did from others, but let you into the mysteries of our numerous makeshifts and contrivances, and how we managed to exist on what others would have starved on. And you remember how proud and sensitive James was? and how, with his wretched income—so hardly earned, too, poor fellow!—he was determined to keep up appearances, and never let the world know how poor he was? It was hard work, I can assure you; and the heavy end of the stick fell to me; the heavy end of this kind of stick always does fall to the woman; for, as the housekeeper, I had to make the best of things and to feel the worst, to pull the two gaping ends together as well as I could and to put myself in the gap when I could not.

Of course you remember Ashley Graham, my brother's great friend? They had been students together at the Academy; and once or twice in old days James had been down to the Lakes where Ashley lived; and in his humble modest way, dear fellow, looked up to his friend as to a superior being infinitely beyond him in everything. Certainly Ashley's family was better than ours; and, though they were all ruined