On gaining his old apartment in the gable, Richard seated himself on the edge of the cot-bed.  His shoulders sagged down and a stupefied expression settled upon his face, but his brain was in a tumult.  His own identity was become a matter of doubt to him.  Was he the same Richard Shackford who had found life so sweet when he awoke that morning?  IT must have been some other person who had sat by a window in the sunrise thinking of Margaret Slocum’s love,—­some Richard Shackford with unstained hands!  This one was accused of murdering his kinsman; the weapon with which he had done it, the very match he had used to light him in the deed, were known!  The victim himself had written out the accusation in black and white.  Richard’s brain reeled as he tried to fix his thought on Lemuel Shackford’s letter.  That letter!—­where had it been all this while, and how did it come into Taggett’s possession?  Only one thing was clear to Richard in his inextricable confusion,—­he was not going to be able to prove his innocence; he was a doomed man, and within the hour his shame would be published to the world.  Rowland Slocum and Lawyer Perkins had already condemned him, and Margaret would condemn him when she knew all; for it was evident that up to last evening she had not been told.  How did it happen that these overwhelming proofs had rolled themselves up against him?  What malign influences were these at work, hurrying him on to destruction, and not leaving a single loophole of escape?  Who would believe the story of his innocent ramble on the turnpike that Tuesday night?  Who could doubt that he had gone directly from the Slocums’ to Welch’s Court, and then crept home red-handed through the deserted streets?

Richard heard the steam-whistles recalling the operatives to work, and dimly understood it was one o’clock; but after that he paid no attention to the lapse of time.  It was an hour later, perhaps two hours,—­Richard could not tell,—­when he roused himself from his stupor, and descending the stairs passed through the kitchen into the scullery.  There he halted and leaned against the sink, irresolute, as though his purpose, if he had had a purpose, were escaping him.  He stood with his eyes resting listlessly on a barrel in the further corner of the apartment.  It was a heavy-hooped wine-cask, in which Lemuel Shackford had been wont to keep his winter’s supply of salted meat.  Suddenly Richard started forward with an inarticulate cry, and at the same instant there came a loud knocking at the door behind him.  The sound reverberated through the empty house, filling the place with awful echoes,—­like those knocks at the gate of Macbeth’s castle the night of Duncan’s murder.  Richard stood petrified for a second; then he hastily turned the key in the lock, and Mr. Taggett stepped into the scullery.

The two men exchanged swift glances.  The bewildered air of a moment before had passed from Richard; the dullness had faded out of his eyes, leaving them the clear, alert expression they ordinarily wore.  He was self-possessed, but the effort his self-possession cost him was obvious.  There was a something in his face—­a dilation of the nostril, a curve of the under lip—­which put Mr. Taggett very much on his guard.  Mr. Taggett was the first to speak.