criminal was himself a plutocrat. It had got known, besides, -and the fact had been widely disseminated by all the papers from an early stage, that the murdered man had been the murderer's protector and benefactor from his infancy upward; that he had fed, clothed, nurtured, and educated him, and had made him his heir. As a return for this lifelong benevolence, the nephew had killed his uncle so as the sooner to possess himself of his inheritance, and he had in reality enjoyed that inheritance during ten long, guilty years. When the melancholy prison van made its appearance, yells of hate and fury rent the air. Agatha heard them, waiting with a sick yet prayerful heart in a hired room close by the Palais de Justice; the prisoner heard them as he sat in his little, carefully locked box. They drove him under a covered archway and shut the gates.

He stopped for one instant in the doorway, and cast a swift glance over the sea of faces turned toward him.

The prisoner passed to his bench, bowed to the president, who took no notice of the salutation, and sat down.

The act of accusation, as they call it, was read-a lengthy document, quite a small book in itself, setting forth the whole story of the crime as it presented itself to the mind of the public prosecutor - the advocate general, to give him his proper title. This document - really nothing more than a written brief against the prisoner-attacked him with violence from the very first, and ascribed to him, besides the crime now actually under consideration, as many more as it could conveniently insinuate. The man thus accused appeared to listen with great composure. The audience, however, at least the non-legal part of it, — got impatient, and began to whisper in friendly ears that the same thing might have been said with half the words in a quarter of the time. But the slow, monotonous drone went on as if it would never come to a conclusion. It did so, nevertheless, unexpectedly; the president nodded; somebody coughed; and soon after the examination of the prisoner began.

The prisoner stood up to be examined. As he did so, even his enemies and who but Kees Hessel was his friend in that large concourse?-even his enemies acknowledged the dignity of his bearing.

"Your name?" said the president.

"Joost Avelingh.'

"Your profession?"

"I have none."

"You have no title of any kind -no university degree?" "None."

"No occupation?" The president, a red-faced little man, leered at the prisoner over his round spectacles. Joost smiled a bitter little smile.

"I am a member of the council of management of some ten or twelve charitable societies," he said, "and on the board of some half-dozen industrial companies; that is all."

"Yes," said the president, "I know. You have found charity a convenient cloak to hide a multitude of sins."

Joost's soul flinched, if that expression be permissible.

"You admit," said the president, "that the Baron van Trotsem, your uncle, took you into his house when you were a destitute orphan of five, and that from that moment until the day of his death he fed, clothed, and educated you, and that finally he appointed you his heir?"

"Yes," said Joost.

"Did you know during the baron's lifetime that his will had been drawn up in your favor?"

"I had reasons to suspect it from frequent allusions which he made."

"Had you, in spite of all you owed him, any cause-in your own opinion-to dislike the Baron van Trotsem, or to feel a grudge against him?"

"Yes," said Joost, in a distinct voice. "We did not get on well together, and he made me very unhappy." He refused to see the anxious signs his advocate was covertly making him. The poor man desisted in despair.

"That is vague," said the president, "and unsatisfactory. Were there any special grievances which you could bring forward?"

"My uncle," replied the accused, "had resisted my wishes whenever he could do so. He had refused to allow me to take up a legal career, and had insisted on my studying medicine without any adequate reason. He had forbidden me to marry the lady who is at present my wife, also without in any way explaining his action in that matter."

"Ah!" said the president.

"Many a man," continued Joost's examiner, "has been compelled-by his very affection to resist youthful desires,

to choose another profession for a son or ward, to deny his consent to an early marriage. In such cases the reasons usually appear inadequate' to the sufferer. Are these all the offenses you charge your uncle with?"

"I charge him with nothing," replied the prisoner; "I answer your questions as best I can.

"And

you admit that you hated him?"

"Yes," replied Joost, softly.

Once more quick glances were interchanged. The counsel for the defense cast up his eyes to heaven and folded his lean hands over his black robe.

"On the evening of your uncle's death you had had words with him?"

"I had."

"And you knew, when he ordered his carriage, that he was about to drive to the notary to alter his will?”

"I did."

"You knew you were bringing him there, and that it was his intention to disinherit you in case you married the Freule van Hessel?'

"Yes."

"He had told you so expressly?"

"He had."

"And you killed him before he could reach his destination?"

"No." Joost's voice rang out clear and full.

"That will do. Prisoner, you may sit down."

After that the witnesses were called-the witnesses for the prosecution; there were none for the defense.

Jan Lorentz gave his evidence brightly and decidedly enough. His account of the events of the evening flowed on smoothly till it reached the description of the moment when the crime was committed. Here the witness faltered, contradicted himself stopped.

"You repeatedly

"Take care," said the president, sternly. stated in the preliminary inquiry that you saw the accused seize his uncle by the red neckerchief he wore. That statement is fully corroborated by the evidence of the Jonker van Asveld, who says that you first made it to him when you were arrested on a charge of vagabondage, thereby causing him to communicate with the necessary authorities. Do you maintain it now?"

The witness looked round nervously at Joost Avelingh, then at Van Asveld. His eyes wandered rapidly over the glass ceiling of the hall back to the president's face.

"Yes," he said.

The notary described the arrival of the chaise with the dead man at his house. He created a great sensation by solemnly affirming that the red comforter was drawn into a tight knot round the neck of the corpse, a knot so tight indeed that it must, in his opinion, have been purposely tightened. The prisoner was once more called forward.

"Can you explain the tightness of the knot round your uncle's neck?"

"No," said Joost.

"While he was lying in the chaise in that condition - dying -that, at any rate is in confesso-what did you do to relieve him?"

"Nothing," said Joost.

He felt the absurdity of the answer even while he made it. There was not a man in the hall who believed him on this point not even Kees Hessel.

"You may sit down," said the president.

The notary continued his account. It ended with the recital of the prisoner's last words that fatal evening. "When I told him the baron was dead," said the notary, "Mynheer Avelingh broke out into a wild cry. 'I knew it!' he shrieked. 'I would give the world were it not so.' That was all he said at the time."

"Can you explain that exclamation?" asked the president of the prisoner.

"I do not wish to do so."

"You will scarcely pretend, I suppose, that it was caused by grief for the loss of the man whom you regarded, as you have just admitted, with feelings of such strong aversion?"

"It was not," said Joost.

After that came the doctor. There were signs, he admitted, which pointed to strangulation, but as it was certain that the dead man had previously had a fit of some kind, it was almost impossible to say whether the tightening of the comforter, which accounted for the symptoms alluded to, had occasioned death, or had perhaps merely accompanied, or even immediately succeeded it.

"You mean to imply," said the president, "that the baron

might, judging from the condition of the brain and heart, have died before the neckerchief was drawn tight?"

"That may have been so," said the doctor. "Immediately before."

"On the other hand, the tightening of the neckerchief may have been in itself sufficient to cause death?"

"I cannot say," replied the doctor. "It depends first on how tight it was drawn; secondly, on how long it had been tightened before the notary loosened it; thirdly, on the appearance the corpse presented immediately before and immediately after the unfastening of the knot. I did not see the corpse till half an hour later, and there was no post-mortem examination. I cannot say."

"But you must say, sir!" cried the little president, pettishly; "the whole case turns on it."

"Then God help the prisoner, Mynheer the President. If my evidence and Jan Lorentz's be all the proof against him, God grant him a good escape."

"Silence!" cried the president; "you were not asked for any such expression of opinion. Step down, sir."

The Jonker van Asveld was next called.

It transpired in the course of the examination that Arthur had received money from Joost. The whole story of the legacy came out, to the amazement of the audience.

66

Prisoner," said the president, "can you explain how you came to give such an enormous sum as forty thousand florins to the witness, merely because he asked you for it?"

"I considered it my duty to do so," said Joost.

“Ah, conscience is a wonderful power," said a clergyman to his neighbor; "no rest, you see, no rest.”

The court adjourned at this stage of the proceedings. There were three men in it, at that moment, and three only, who did not believe the prisoner guilty; they were Kees Hessel, Joost Avelingh, and Jan Lorentz.

They locked the prisoner in a cell, while waiting for the court to reassemble. Joost Avelingh felt relieved to find himself again alone. He could not shut his eyes to the fact that matters had gone very much against him. And no doubt it was true, as his counsel had told him in passing out, that his own evidence had done most to damage his cause. "If you are condemned, Mr. Avelingh," the lawyer had said, not without a shade of bitterness in his tone," and there is every reason