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hearted; if you've told us nothing but the truth about your friend Catheron, I think I shall be able to see you through this. Perhaps, however, you may be able to prove an alibi.”

"What time was the murder committed?" asked Mr. Dobb.

"Between nine and twelve o'clock."

"Then I rather can prove an alibi,” cried the indignant clerk, "if our slavy doesn't make a fool of herself. My wife and I had a few words on Thursday morning, and made it up over an early supper on Thursday evening; and it was half-past eight when the pot-boy from the Coach and Horses brought the supper-beer. I opened the door to him; and I didn't put my nose outside Amanda Villas after that."

"And if you can't prove an alibi, Dobb, and they'll take bail for you, I'm ready to be one of your securities," said Mr. Halliday.

A fly was sent for. The handcuffs were dispensed with as an unnecessary degradation, inasmuch as Mr. Dobb was quite willing to appear before any tribunal whatever; and the metro

politan detective managed every thing with such perfect discretion, that the clerk's removal to the house of the Roxborough magistrate was effected without esclandre. That important functionary had elected to hold a preliminary investigation at twelve o'clock that day, and the Scarsdale witnesses had been duly summoned. A solicitor, who had been a member of the Dobb circle, and one of the wildest roisterers of Roxborough some three or four years before, was sent for at the clerk's request, to watch the proceedings on his behalf; and the maid-of-all-work, on whose evidence thè alibi chiefly depended, was also summoned, and did her best to put her employer's neck in jeopardy by her persistent refusal to give straightforward answers, or to confine her speech to the subject in hand.

But in spite of this young lady, the evidence of the clerk's innocence of any overt share in the outrage was very plain, and Henry Adolphus departed from the magistrate's presence a free man, to find his wife in her strongest hysterics in the magistrate's-hall.

And before Mr. Dobb had

quitted the magisterial residence, the metropolitan detective had ascertained the exact train by which

Gervoise Catheron had left Roxborough, and was

speeding London-wards in hot chase of the wretched lieutenant.

CHAPTER XI.

"RING OUT YOUR BELLS; LET MOURNING SHOWS BE SPREAD."

MR. HOLROYDE was dying. There was no longer the faintest ray of hope. The great surgeon-who flitted to and fro between London and Roxborough as if he had been some ominous bird-of-passageand Sir Jasper's medical attendant were agreed upon this point. On the very day in which the preliminary investigation was held by the magistrate, the London surgeon announced to Sir Jasper that his patient was sinking, and that any worldly affairs which Arthur Holroyde might have to arrange had better be arranged with all despatch.

"Is he still conscious?" asked Sir Jasper, who had only been permitted to see his guest once during the silent struggle between life and death.

"Yes. He is quite conscious. Your clergy

man, who seems a most worthy person, though perhaps a little deficient in tact, has been with him several times; but I fear Mr. Holroyde is not a religious man. However, he received the clergyman with perfect courtesy, and did not seem averse to his presence. I asked him if he would like his lawyer to be sent for; but he said no-there were plenty of lawyers who would like to see him, but none whom he wanted to see. And then he asked me if I remembered Lemaitre or Wallack as Don Cæsar de Bazan, and reminded me of that speech in which the doomed count predicts the lamentations of his creditors. A very singular man this Mr. Holroyde."

"A persifleur," said the Baronet. "I daresay he has lived a very pleasant life; and now he is dying, alone—in my library, with all those grim pagan books surrounding him, and those stony pagan busts keeping guard over him—and, with the exception of Deverill Slingsby, who has ridden over two or three times to make inquiries, nobody seems to care very much whether he lives or dies."

Sir Jasper pondered upon this more gravely

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