“Yes.”

“Would you know it?”

“No.  I was, to say the truth, too frightened to examine the instrument that was to shoot me.”

“Then we have nothing but the admission and the testimony of the accomplices, who say it was a frolic,” said Stewart.

“No frolic to me,” cried Henderson.  “Why then didn’t they return the money?”

“They say they called and ran after you, and that you would not wait to get it back.”

“Then why didn’t they produce it to you?” said Henderson.  “The money is appropriated.”

“A circumstance,” said the fiscal, “in itself sufficient to rebut the frolic.  Yes, the strength of the case is there.”

“So I thought,” growled the man.

“You wasn’t in liquor?”

“No.”

“Are you ever?”

“I don’t deny that in town I take a glass, but seldom so much as to affect my walking; never so much as make me dream I was robbed of money, and that too money gone from my pocket.”

“Where do you carry your money?”

“In my waistcoat pocket.  Sometimes I have carried a valuable bill home in my snuff-mull, when it was empty by chance.”

“Where had you the five pounds?”

“I am not sure, but I think in my left waistcoat pocket.”

“And you gave it on demand?  It was not rifled from you?”

“I thrust it into the villain’s hand, and ran.”

“Well, we must confront you with the supposed robber,” said the captain.  “But you seem to be in choler, and I caution you against a precipitate judgment.  You may naturally think the admission of the young men enough, and that may make you see what perhaps may not be to be seen.  I confess the admission of three to be more than the law wants or wishes; yet there are peculiarities in this case that take it out of the general rules.”  Stewart then nodded to an officer, who went out and returned.

“There stands the prisoner.”

“Charles S——­th!” ejaculated the uncle:  “my own nephew! execrable villain!”

And he looked at the youth with bated breath and fiery eyes.

There was silence for a few minutes.  The officials looked pitiful.  The mother hung down her head; and little Jeannie leered significantly, while she took the strings of her bonnet, tied them, undid them again, and flung away the ends till they went round her neck; nay, the playful minx was utterly dead to the condition of her brother who stood there, ashamed to look any one in the face, if he was not rather like an exhumed corpse; and we would not be far out if we said that she even laughed as she saw the curmudgeon staring like an angry mastiff at the brother she loved so well.  But then, was she not an eccentric thing, driven hither and thither by vagrant impulses, and with thoughts in her head which nobody could understand?

“Was this the man who robbed you, Mr. Henderson?”

“Yes, the very man; now when I recollect.  Stay, was there any handkerchief found on him?”