Tom Bristow seldom let a day pass over without seeing Lionel Dering. Sometimes he accompanied Mr. Hoskyns to the prison, sometimes he went alone. The lawyer and he held many long consultations together as to the probable result of the trial. They could not conceal from themselves that there was grave cause for apprehension. The weight of circumstantial evidence that would be brought to bear against Lionel was almost overwhelming; while, on the other hand, not a single tittle of evidence was forthcoming which tended to implicate any other person. Notwithstanding all this, Tom was as morally convinced of his friend\'s innocence as he was of his own existence. Mr. Hoskyns, in his way, was equally positive. He felt sure that Lionel had not knowingly committed the crime, but he thought it possible that he might have done it in a fit of mental aberration, without retaining the least recollection of it afterwards. In the annals of criminal jurisprudence such cases are by no means unknown. And this was the supposition on which the eminent counsel whom he had retained for the trial seemed inclined to base his argument for the defence. Hoskyns had engaged a detective from Scotland Yard, and had left no stone unturned in his efforts to lift at least some portion of the dreadful weight of evidence from off his client\'s shoulders, but up to the present time all such efforts had been utterly in vain. That there might possibly be some foul conspiracy on foot to get rid of Lionel was an idea that for a little while found a lodging in the lawyer\'s mind. But in all the wide world, as far as he knew, there was only one person who would be benefited by the death of Lionel Dering. That person was Kester St. George, and of evidence implicating him in the murder there was absolutely none. It was currently reported that he was lying seriously ill in London, which accounted for his not having been seen in Duxley since the day of the inquest.

The shock of his friend Osmond\'s dreadful death, taken in conjunction with the terrible accusation against his cousin, and the fact that he himself had been called upon to give evidence at the inquest, was considered by the gossips of the little town amply sufficient to account for Mr. St. George\'s illness. It was to be hoped that his health would be restored before the day appointed for his cousin\'s trial, he being one of the chief witnesses who would be called on that important occasion.

Tom Bristow was obliged to confess himself beaten, as Mr. Hoskyns had been beaten before him. There was a mystery about the case which he was totally unable to fathom. His conviction of his friend\'s innocence never wavered for a single moment, and yet when he asked himself: How came the jet stud into Osmond\'s hand? How came the stains on Dering\'s shirt? he felt himself utterly unable to suggest any answer that would satisfy his own reason, or that would be likely to satisfy the reason of a judge and jury. It was very easy to say that Dering must be the victim of some foul conspiracy, but unless some proof, however faint, could be advanced of the existence of some such plot, his assertion would go for nothing, or merely be set down as the unwarranted utterance of a too partial friend.

Tom had not been half an hour in Lionel\'s company before he knew all about his friend\'s marriage, and next day he called on Edith with a note of introduction from her husband. Edith had beard so much, at different times, about Bristow, that she welcomed him with unfeigned gladness, and he, on his side, was deeply impressed with the sweet earnestness and womanly tenderness of her disposition. He was not long in perceiving that Edith altogether failed to realize the full measure of her husband\'s danger. She talked as if his acquittal were a matter that admitted of no dispute; and on one occasion, Tom found her busy sketching out the plan of a Continental tour for Lionel and herself on which they were to start the day after the trial should be over. It made Tom\'s heart ache to see how sanguine she was; but, as yet, the necessity for undeceiving her had not arisen.

Mrs. Garside and Edith were living in quiet lodgings in a quiet part of the town. They had brought one servant with them--Martha Vince by name, from whom they had few or no secrets. Martha had been Edith\'s nurse, and had lived with her ever since, and hoped to stay with her till she died. To the world at large she seemed nothing more than a shrewd, hard-working, money-saving woman; but Edith knew well the faithful and affectionate heart that beat behind the plain exterior of Martha Vince.

The life led by the two ladies was necessarily a very lonely one, and they had no wish that it should be otherwise. They never went out, except to the prison, or to take a walk for health\'s sake through the quiet fields at the back of the town. They were always closely veiled when they went abroad, and to the people of Duxley their features were absolutely unknown. Mr. Hoskyns and Tom were their only visitors--their only friends in those dark hours of adversity.

"I am going to make a very singular request to-day," said Tom one afternoon, when he called to see the ladies as usual. "It is to ask you to give up these very comfortable rooms and transfer yourselves and baggage to Alder Cottage, a pleasant little furnished house, not more than half a mile from here, which just now happens to be to let."

"But my dear Mr. Bristow--" began Mrs. Garside.

"One moment, my dear Mrs. Garside," interrupted Tom. "I have another request to make: that you will not at present ask me my reasons for counselling this removal. You shall have them in a week or ten days without asking. Can you trust me till then?"

"Implicitly," answered Edith, with fervour. "When may we go and view our new home?"

"Now--to-morrow--any time. Only take the cottage, and don\'t be more than a week before you are installed there."

They were installed there in less than a week, despite Mrs. Garside\'s mild protestations that she couldn\'t, for the life of her, understand why that strange Mr. Bristow should want them to give up their comfortable apartments for a dull old house that looked for all the world as if it were haunted, and was built in such an out-of-the way place that to live there was really very little better than being buried alive. But Edith\'s faith in Tom was not to be shaken. She felt sure that he would not have asked them to take up their quarters in Alder Cottage without having good reasons for proposing such a removal. What those reasons were she was naturally somewhat anxious to know, but she hid her impatience from Tom, and waited with smiling resignation till it should please him to tell her the secret which she felt sure was lying perdu in his brain. That there was a secret she could not doubt, because Tom had stipulated that she should not even hint to Lionel that the change of residence had been instigated by him.

Tom was not at all like his usual self about this time. He was restless and uneasy, and seemed to have lost all relish for the ordinary avocations of his everyday life. There were days when he seemed as if he would give anything to get away from the company of his own thoughts, when he would hunt up some acquaintances of former years, whom he would invite to his rooms, and keep there with pressing hospitality till far into the small hours of morning. At other times he would lie on the sofa for hours together, brooding in darkness and solitude; and his landlady, going in about midnight with a light, would find him lying there, broad awake, with a look in his eyes which told her that his thoughts were far away.

Strange to say, the person whom Tom Bristow most frequently invited to his rooms was Jabez Creede, Mr. Hoskyns\' dissipated clerk. As already stated, Tom had known Creede when he himself was a youth in the same office, but the two men were so dissimilar in every respect that that of itself did not seem sufficient to account for the intimacy which now existed between them--an intimacy which was evidently of Tom\'s own seeking.

Creede, whose life seemed to be one chronic round of debt and dissipation, would have been friendly with anybody who would have used him as Tom used him--who would have played cribbage with him so badly that he, Creede, always rose from the table a winner; and who would have treated him to unlimited supplies of tobacco, and innumerable glasses of Irish whiskey, hot and strong.

Tom would never allow Creede to leave his rooms till he was intoxicated, not that the latter ever seemed particularly anxious to go before that happy consummation was arrived at. But Tom was so abstemious a mortal himself that the fact of his encouraging Creede to drink to excess was somewhat singular. "What a beast the fellow is!" he muttered, as he watched Creede go staggering down the street after one of their evenings together. "But he will answer my purpose better than any one else I could have chosen."

During the three weeks preceding Lionel\'s trial, Tom went to London about half-a-dozen times. He used to go up in the morning and come back in the evening. One morning he called at Alder Cottage on his way to the railway station. "I\'m going up to town to-day," he said, "and while there I mean to buy and send you a certain article of furniture."

"Very thoughtful on your part, Mr. Bristow," said Edith with a smile. "But would you mind telling me what the article in question is?"

"It is a mahogany wardrobe, and it has been made to fit into the recess in your dressing-room."

"But I am not in want of a wardrobe, whether made of mahogany or any other wood," said Edith, with a puzzled look.

"That doesn\'t matter in the least. I shall buy it and send it all the same. The fact is I ordered it when I was in London a fortnight ago. I got Martha Vince to give me the measurement of the recess in which I want it to be fixed."

Edith was mystified, but she had such implicit faith in Tom that she never demurred at anything he either said or did.

Two days later the wardrobe arrived. Tom in person had superintended its removal from the truck to the van at the railway station, and he was at Alder Cottage to receive it. The porters, by Tom\'s instructions, carried it as far as the landing upstairs, and there left it.

"It now remains to be unpacked," said Tom, "and then Martha and I, with Mrs. Dering\'s permission, will try to fix it in the corner it is intended to occupy."

"But why not have kept the railway men to unpack and fix it?" asked Mrs. Garside.

"Because there is a little secret connected with this wardrobe," answered Tom, "of which we four alone must possess the key."

"I like secrets," said Mrs. Garside. "It is so delightful to know something that nobody else knows."

So the wardrobe was unpacked, and proved to be a very handsome and substantial piece of furniture indeed. It tested their united strength to move it into the position it was to occupy, but when once there they found that it fitted the recess exactly.

"Now for the secret!" said Mrs. Garside, as she sat down panting on a chair.

"Suppose we adjourn downstairs," said Tom. "I have much to say to you."

His tone was very grave. The colour faded out of Edith\'s cheeks as he spoke. Her sensitive heart took alarm in a moment.

As soon as Mrs. Garside, Edith, and Tom had entered the parlour, Martha Vince discreetly shut the door upon them, and went back to her work in the kitchen.

"First of all," began Tom, "I must ask whether your servant, Martha Vince, has your entire confidence."

"My full and entire confidence," answered Edith, without a minute\'s hesitation. "There is no more faithful creature breathing."

"My own idea of her exactly," said Tom.

"Such being the case, it would be as well that she should hear what I have to say to you."

So the bell was rung, and Martha was summoned to join the consultation in the parlour.

"Some of my proceedings must have appeared very strange to you, Mrs. Dering," said Tom, addressing himself to Edith. "If, at times, I have seemed over-intrusive, I must claim your forgiveness on the score of my thorough disinterestedness. In all that I have done, I have been actuated by one motive only: that motive was the welfare of my dear friend, Lionel Dering."

"I believe you, from my heart," said Edith, earnestly. "But indeed, no such apology was needed--no apology at all."

Mrs. Garside coughed a dubious little cough. Really, that strange Mr. Bristow was more strange than usua............