Slavin beckoned to Lee.  “Take um inside the hotel parlour, Nick,” he ordered, “fwhere we hild coort this mornin.’  Yorkey, yu’ go an’ hunt up Mr. Gully.  I don’t think he’s pulled out yet, has he, Nick?” He spoke now with a certain grim eagerness.

The livery-man made a gesture in the negative, and Yorke departed upon his quest.  Slavin ushered Lee and the hobo into the room.  To the sergeant’s surprise he beheld the justice sitting at the table writing.  He concluded that that gentleman must have just stepped in from the rear entrance of the hotel, or the bar, during his own and Yorke’s temporary absence.

At the entrance of the trio Gully raised his head and, with the pen poised in his fingers, sat perfectly motionless, staring at them strangely out of his shadowy eyes.  His face seemed transformed into a blank, expressionless mask.  The sergeant leaned over the table and spoke to him in a rapid aside.

“Ah!” murmured Mr. Gully, and he remained for a space in deep thought.  “Sergeant,” he began presently, “I’ll have to be pulling out soon.  Before we start in with this man . . . will you kindly step down to Doctor Cox’s with these papers and ask him to sign them?”

It seemed an ordinary request.  Slavin complied.

Returning some ten or fifteen minutes later he noticed Lee was absent.  The magistrate answered his query.  “Sent him round to throw the harness on my team,” he drawled, as he pored over a Criminal Code, “he’ll be back in a moment—­ah! here he is.”  And just then the latter entered, along with Yorke.  The hobo was sitting slumped in a chair, as Slavin had left him.  With one accord they all centred their gaze upon the unkempt delinquent.  Ragged and unwashed, he presented a decidedly unlovely appearance, which was heightened by his stubble-coated visage showing signs as of recent ill-usage.  His age might have been anything between thirty and forty.

The sergeant, a huge, menacing figure of a man, stepped forward and motioned to him to stand.  “Now, see here; look, me man!” he said slowly and distinctly, a sort of tense eagerness underlying his soft tones, “behfure I shtart in charrgin’ ye wid anythin’ I’m goin’ tu put a few questions tu ye in front av this ginthleman”—­he indicated the justice—­“He’s a mag’strate, so ye’d best tell th’ trute.  Now—­th’ night behfure last—­betune say, nine an’ twelve o’clock . . . fwhere was ye?”—­he paused—­“Think harrd, an’ come across wid th’ straight goods.”

A tense silence succeeded.  The hobo, the cynosure of a ring of watchful expectant faces, mumbled indistinctly, “I was sleepin’—­up in th’ loft o’ th’ livery-stable.”

“Did yeh—­” Slavin eyed the man keenly—­“did yeh see—­or hear—­any fella take a harse out av th’ shtable durin’ that time?”

Gully moved slightly.  With the mannerism he affected, his left hand dragging at his moustache and his right slid between the lapels of his coat, he leaned forward and fixed his eyes full upon the hobo’s battered visage.