As Lemoine said this he quickly snatched from the sheath at the soldier’s side the bayonet which hung at his hip.  The soldiers were standing one to the right and one to the left of him, with their hands interlaced over the muzzles of their guns, whose butts rested on the stone floor.  They apparently paid no attention to the conversation that was going on, if they understood it, which was unlikely.  Lemoine had the bayonet in his hands before either of the four men present knew what he was doing.

Grasping both hands over the butt of the bayonet, with the point towards his breast, he thrust the blade with desperate energy nearly through his body.  The whole action was done so quickly that no one realized what had happened until Lemoine threw his hands up and they saw the bayonet sticking in his breast.  A look of agony came in the wounded man’s eyes, and his lips whitened.  He staggered against the soldier at his right, who gave way with the impact, and then he tottered against the whitewashed stone wall, his right arm sweeping automatically up and down the wall as if he were brushing something from the stones.  A groan escaped him, and he dropped on one knee.  His eyes turned helplessly towards Dupre, and he gasped out the words: 

“My God!—­you were right—­after all.”

Then he fell forward on his face, and the tragedy ended.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

MR. WARD’S STORY “THE SILENT WITNESS.”

We published in our January number the first of a series of stories by Herbert D. Ward, in which Mr. Ward will exhibit in dramatic form some monstrous imperfections in the present modes of judicial procedure.  That there is great need of such a study is shown by the remarkable effect produced by the story already published, “The Silent Witness.”  In various parts of the country the press has taken particular notice of the story and of the question with which it deals.  A recent number of “The Argus,” Avoca, Pennsylvania, contained the following editorial: 

“JUSTICE, WHERE ART THOU?”

“‘The Silent Witness,’ a powerful story in McCLURE’s MAGAZINE for January, portrays in a graphic and thrilling manner the evil, which in some cases amounts almost to a horror, of holding in confinement witnesses in cases of capital crime who are unable to furnish bail.

“The story tells of a young and stalwart country lad who goes to Boston in search of fortune, and on the night of his arrival, while wandering about in quest of lodgings to suit his scanty purse, is the unwilling witness of a murder.

“He is arrested and held in the city jail to await the trial of the murderer.

“The news of his imprisonment reaches his widow mother up among the New Hampshire hills.  She knows nothing of the circumstances further than the rumors brought to her by her country neighbors.  She dies of a broken heart, though never doubting the innocence of her noble-hearted boy.