“None, sr.”  He considered for a moment, and added:  “There was a curious thing happened three weeks ago over my watch.  It found its way one night to Mr. Mackenzie’s quarters.  He brought it to me in the morning; said it was lying, when he awoke, on the table beside his bed.  He seemed utterly puzzled.  He had been to one or two already to discover the owner.  We joked him about it, the more by token that his own watch had broken down the day before and was away at the mender’s.  The whole thing was queer, and has not been explained.  Of course in that instance he was innocent:  everything proves it.  It just occurred to me as worth mentioning, because in both instances the lad may have been the victim of a trick.”

“I am glad you did so,” I said; “though just now it does not throw any light that I can see.”  I rose and paced the room.  “Mr. Mackenzie had better be confronted with this, too, and hear your evidence.  It’s best he should know the worst against him; and if he be guilty it may move him to confession.”

“Certainly, sir,” Captain Murray assented.  “Shall I fetch him?”

“No, remain where you are,” I said; “I will go for him myself.”

I understood that Mr. Urquhart had retired to his own quarters or to my brother’s, and that Mr. Mackenzie had been left in the entresol alone.  But as I descended the stairs quietly I heard within that room a voice which at first persuaded me he had company, and next that, left to himself, he had broken down and given way to the most childish wailing.  The voice was so unlike his, or any grown man’s, that it arrested me on the lowermost stair against my will.  It resembled rather the sobbing of an infant mingled with short strangled cries of contrition and despair.

“What shall I do?  What shall I do?  I didn’t mean it—­I meant to do good!  What shall I do?”

So much I heard (as I say) against my will, before my astonishment gave room to a sense of shame at playing, even for a moment, the eavesdropper upon the lad I was to judge.  I stepped quickly to the door, and with a warning rattle (to give him time to recover himself) turned the handle and entered.

He was alone, lying back in an easy chair—­not writhing there in anguish of mind, as I had fully expected, but sunk rather in a state of dull and hopeless apathy.  To reconcile his attitude with the sounds I had just heard was merely impossible; and it bewildered me worse than any in the long chain of bewildering incidents.  For five seconds or so he appeared not to see me; but when he grew aware his look changed suddenly to one of utter terror, and his eyes, shifting from me, shot a glance about the room as if he expected some new accusation to dart at him from the corners.  His indignation and passionate defiance were gone:  his eyes seemed to ask me, “How much do you know?” before he dropped them and stood before me, sullenly submissive.

“I want you upstairs,” said I:  “not to hear your defence on this charge, for Mr. Urquhart has not yet specified it.  But there is another matter.”