For hours after the exciting events of the forenoon, there were but few visitors at the “Sickle and Sheaf.”  Slade, who did not show himself among the crowd, came down soon after its dispersion.  He had shaved and put on clean linen; but still bore many evidences of a night spent without sleep.  His eyes were red and heavy and the eyelids swollen; while his skin was relaxed and colorless.  As he descended the stairs, I was walking in the passage.  He looked shy at me, and merely nodded.  Guilt was written plainly on his countenance; and with it was blended anxiety and alarm.  That he might be involved in trouble, he had reason to fear; for he was one of the party engaged in gambling in Green’s room, as both Mr. Jacobs and I had witnessed.

“This is dreadful business,” said he, as we met, face to face, half an hour afterward.  He did not look me steadily in the eyes.

“It is horrible!” I answered.  “To corrupt and ruin a young man, and then murder him!  There are few deeds in the catalogue of crime blacker than this!”

“It was done in the heat of passion,” said the landlord, with something of an apology in his manner.  “Green never meant to kill him.”

“In peaceful intercourse with his fellow-men, why did he carry a deadly weapon?  There was murder in his heart, sir.”

“That is speaking very strongly.”

“Not stronger than the facts will warrant,” I replied.  “That Green is a murderer in heart, it needed not this awful consummation to show.  With a cool, deliberate purpose, he has sought, from the beginning, to destroy young Hammond.”

“It is hardly fair,” answered Slade, “in the present feverish excitement against Green, to assume such a questionable position.  It may do him a great wrong.”

“Did Willy Hammond speak only idle words, when he accused Green of having followed him like a thirsty bloodhound?—­of having robbed, and cheated, and debased him from the beginning?”

“He was terribly excited at the moment.”

“Yes,” said I, “no ear that heard his words could for an instant doubt that they were truthful utterances, wrung from a maddened heart.”

My earnest, positive manner had its effect upon Slade.  He knew that what I asserted, the whole history of Green’s intercourse with young Hammond would prove; and he had, moreover, the guilty consciousness of being a party to the young man’s ruin.  His eyes cowered beneath the steady gaze I fixed upon him.  I thought of him as one implicated in the murder, and my thoughts must have been visible in my face.

“One murder will not justify another,” said he.

“There is no justification for murder on any plea,” was my response.

“And yet, if these infuriated men find Green, they will murder him.”

“I hope not.  Indignation at a horrible crime has fearfully excited the people.  But I think their sense of justice is strong enough to prevent the consequences you apprehend.”