The man pulled his hat off and came a step nearer.

‘I am Randolph Villiers!’

Kitty shrieked again and covered her face with her hands, while Vandeloup laughed in a mocking manner, though his pale face and quivering lip told that his mirth was assumed.

‘Yes,’ said Villiers, throwing his hat on the floor of the cell, ’it was Pierre Lemaire, and not I, who died.  The struggle took place as you have described, but he,’ pointing to Vandeloup, ’wishing to get rid of Pierre for reasons of his own stabbed him, and not me, in the back.  He thrust the knife into my hand, and I, in my blind fury, thought that I had murdered the dumb man.  I was afraid of being arrested for the murder, so, as suggested by Vandeloup, I changed clothes with the dead man and wrapped my own up in a bundle.  We hid the body and the nugget in one of the old mining shafts and then came down to Ballarat.  I was similar to Pierre in appearance, except that my chin was shaven.  I went down to the Wattle Tree Hotel as Pierre after leaving my clothes outside the window of the bedroom which Vandeloup pointed out to me.  Then he went to the theatre and told me to rejoin him there as Villiers.  I got my own clothes into the room, dressed again as myself; then, locking the door, so that the people of the hotel might suppose that Pierre slept, I jumped out of the window of the bedroom and went to the theatre.  There I played my part as you know, and while we were behind the scenes Mr Wopples asked me to put out the gas in his room.  I did so, and took from his dressing-table a black beard, in order to disguise myself as Pierre till my beard had grown.  We went to supper, and then I parted with Jarper at two o’clock in the morning, and went back to the hotel, where I climbed into the bedroom through the window and reassumed Pierre’s dress for ever.  It was by Vandeloup’s advice I pretended to be drunk, as I could not go to the Pactolus, where my wife would have recognised me.  Then I, as the supposed Pierre, was discharged, as you know.  Vandeloup, aping friendship, drew the dead man’s salary and bought clothes and a box for me.  In the middle of one night I still disguised as Pierre, slipped out of the window, and went up to Black Hill, where I found the nugget and brought it down to my room at the Wattle Tree Hotel.  Then Vandeloup brought in the box with my clothes, and we packed the nugget in it, together with the suit I had worn at the time of the murder.  Following his instructions, I came down to Melbourne, and there disposed of the nugget—­no need to ask how, as there are always people ready to do things of that sort for payment.  When I was paid for the nugget, and I only got eight hundred pounds, the man who melted it down taking the rest, I had to give six hundred to Vandeloup, as I was in his power as I thought, and dare not refuse in case he should denounce me for the murder of Pierre Lemaire.  And now I find that I have been innocent all the time, and he has been frightening me with a shadow.  He, not I, was the murderer of Pierre Lemaire, and you can prove it.’