Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/47

Rh "So you takes a hinterest in this 'ere murder, do yer?" he spells out.

"Oh, don't I? I bought a Sunday paper. Shouldn't I like to see that there young man as killed his uncle scragged—that's all!"

Mr. Peters shook his head doubtfully, with a less friendly glance at Kuppins. But there were secrets and mysteries of his art he did not trust at all times to the dirty alphabet; and perhaps his opinion on the subject of the murder of Mr. Montague Harding was one of them.

Kuppins presently fetched him a pipe; and as he sat by the smoky fire, he watched alternately the blue cloud that issued from his lips and the clumsy figure of the damsel pacing up and down with the "fondling" (asleep after the exhaustion attendant on a desperate choke) upon her arms.

"If," mused Mr. Peters, with his mouth very much to the left of his nose—"if that there baby was grow'd up, he might help me to find out the rights and wrongs of this 'ere murder."

Who so fit? or who so unfit? Which shall we say? If in the wonderful course of events, this little child shall ever have a part in dragging a murderer to a murderer's doom, shall it be called a monstrous and a terrible outrage of nature, or a just and a fitting retribution?

17th of February shone out bright and clear, and a frosty sunlight illumined the windows of the court where Richard Marwood stood to be tried for his life.

Never, perhaps, had that court been so crowded; never, perhaps, had there been so much anxiety felt in Slopperton for the result of any trial as was felt that day for the issue of the trial of Richard Marwood.

The cold bright sunlight streaming in at the windows seemed to fall brightest and coldest on the wan white face of the prisoner at the bar.

Three months of mental torture had done their work, and had written their progress in such characters upon that young and once radiant countenance, as Time, in his smooth and peaceful course, would have taken years to trace. But Richard Marwood was calm to-day, with the awful calmness of that despair which is past all hope. Suspense had exhausted him. But he had done with suspense, and felt that his fate was sealed; unless,