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"You remember this ring?"

"I do."

"Is this it?"

"It is, so far as I can judge at this distance."

"Hand the ring to the witness," ordered the judge.

The ring was so handed.

He glanced at it, and said bitterly: "I recognise it. It was her engagement ring."

"Was this ring on her finger that night at the dinner-table?"

"I cannot say, positively, but I believe so. I should have noticed its absence."

"Why, may I ask?"

For the first time the prisoner flushed and the look he darted at his counsel had the sting of a reproach in it. Yet he answered: "It was the token of an engagement I didn't believe in or like. I should have hailed any proof that this engagement was off."

Mr. Moffat smiled enigmatically.

"Mr. Cumberland, if you are not sure of having seen this ring then, when did you see it and where?"

A rustle from end to end of that crowded court-room. This was an audacious move. What was coming? What would be the answer of the man who was believed not only to have made himself the possessor of this ring, but to have taken a most strange and uncanny method of disposing of it afterward? In the breathless hush which followed this first involuntary expression of feeling, Arthur's voice rose, harsh but steady in this reply:

"I saw it when the police showed it to me, and asked me if I could identify it."

"Was that the only time you have seen it up to the present moment?"

Instinctively, the witness's right hand rose; it was as if he were mentally repeating his oath before he uttered coldly and with emphasis, though without any show of emotion:

"It is."

The universal silence gave way to a universal sigh of excitement and relief. District Attorney Fox's lips curled with an imperceptible smile of disdain, which might have impressed the jury if they had been looking his way; but they were all looking with eager and interested eyes at the prisoner, who had just uttered this second distinct and unequivocal denial.

Mr. Moffat noted this, and his own lip curled, but with a very different show of feeling from that which had animated his distinguished opponent. Without waiting for the present sentiment to cool, he proceeded immediately with his examination:

"You swear that you have seen this ring but once since the night of your sister's death, and that was when it was shown you in the coroner's office?"

"I do."

"Does this mean that it was not in your possession at any time during that interim?"

"It certainly does."

"Mr. Cumberland, more than one witness has testified to the fact of your having been seen to place your hand in the casket of your sister, before the eyes of the minister and of others attending her funeral. Is this true?"

"It is."

"Was not this a most unusual thing to do?"

"Perhaps. I was not thinking about that. I had a duty to perform, and I performed it."

"A duty? Will you explain to the jury what duty?"

The witness's head rose, then sank. He, as well as every one else, seemed to be impressed by the solemnity of the moment. Though the intensity of my own interest would not allow my eyes to wander from his face, I could imagine the strained look in Ella's, as she awaited his words.

They came in another instant, but with less steadiness than he had shown before. I even thought I could detect a tremor in his muscles, as well as in his voice:

"I had rebelled against my sister's wishes; I had grieved and deceived her up to the very night of her foul and unnatural death—and all through drink."

Here his eye flashed, and for that fleeting moment he looked a man. "I wished to take an oath—an oath I would remember. It was for this purpose I ordered the casket opened, and thrust my fingers through the flowers I found there. When my fingers touched my sister's brow, I inwardly swore never to taste liquor again. I have kept that oath. Difficult as it was, in my state of mind, and with all my troubles, I have kept it—and been misunderstood in doing so," he added, in lower tones, and with just a touch of bitterness.

It was such an unexpected explanation, and so calculated to cause a decided and favourable reaction in the minds of those who had looked upon this especial act of his as an irrefutable proof of guilt, that it was but natural that some show of public feeling should follow. But this was checked almost immediately, and Mr. Moffat's voice was heard rising again in his strange but telling examination:

"When you thrust your hand in to take this oath, did you drop anything into your sister's casket?"

"I did not. My hand was empty. I held no ring, and dropped none in. I simply touched her forehead."

This added to the feeling; and, in another instant, the excitement might have risen into hubbub, had not the emotions of one little woman found vent in a low and sobbing cry which relieved the tension and gave just the relief needed to hold in check the overstrained feelings of the crowd. I knew the voice and cast one quick glance that way, in time to see Ella sinking affrightedly out of sight under the dismayed looks of father and mother; then, anxious to note whether the prisoner had recognised her, too, looked hastily back to find him standing quietly and unmoved, with his eyes on his counsel and his lips set in the stern line which was slowly changing his expression.

That counsel, strangely alive to the temper and feelings of his audience, waited just long enough for the few simple and solemn words uttered by the accused man to produce their full effect, then with a side glance at Mr. Fox, whose equanimity he had at last succeeded in disturbing, and whose cross-examination of the prisoner he had still to fear, continued his own examination by demanding why, when the ring was discovered in Adelaide's casket and he saw what inferences would be drawn from the fact, he had not made an immediate public explanation of his conduct and the reasons he had had for putting his hand there.

"I'm not a muff," shot from the prisoner's lips, in his old manner. "A man who would take such an oath, in such a way, and at such a time, is not the man to talk about it until he is forced to. I would not talk about it now—"

He was checked at this point; but the glimpse we thus obtained of the natural man, in this indignant and sullen outburst, following so quickly upon the solemn declarations of the moment before, did more for him in the minds of those present than the suavest and most discreet answer given under the instigation of his counsel. Every face showed pleasure, and for a short space, if for no longer, all who listened were disposed to accept his assertions and accord the benefit of doubt to this wayward son of an esteemed father.

To me, who had hoped nothing from Moffat's efforts, the substantial nature of the defence thus openly made manifest, brought reanimation and an unexpected confidence in the future.

The question as to who had dropped the ring into the casket if Arthur had not—the innocent children, the grieving servants—was latent, of course, in every breast, but it had not yet reached the point demanding expression.

Meanwhile, the examination proceeded.

"Mr. Cumberland, you have stated that you did not personally drop this ring into the place where it was ultimately found. Can you tell us of your own knowledge who did?"

"I cannot. I know nothing about the ring. I was much surprised, probably more surprised than any one else, to hear of its discovery in that place."

The slip—and it was a slip for him to introduce that more—was immediately taken advantage of by his counsel.

"You say 'more,' Why should it be more of a surprise to you than to any one else to learn where this missing engagement ring of your sister's had been found?"

Again that look of displeasure directed towards his questioner, and a certain additional hardness in his reply, when he finally made it.

"I was her brother. I had a brother's antipathies and rightful suspicions. I could not see how that ring came to be where it was, when the only one interested in its restoration was in prison."

This was a direct blow at myself, and of course called Mr. Fox to his feet, with a motion to strike out this answer. An altercation followed between him and Mr. Moffat, which, deeply as it involved my life and reputation, failed to impress me, as it might otherwise have done, if my whole mind had not been engaged in reconciling the difficulty about this ring with what I knew of Carmel and the probability which existed of her having been responsible for its removal from her sister's hand. But Carmel had been ill since, desperately ill and unconscious. She could have had nothing to do with its disposal afterwards among the flowers at her sister's funeral. Nor had she been in a condition to delegate this act of concealment to another. Who, then, had been the intermediary in this business? The question was no longer a latent one in my mind; it was an insistent one, compelling me either to discredit Arthur's explanation (in which case anything might be believed of him) or to accept for good and all this new theory that some person of unknown identity had played an accessory's part in this crime, whose full burden I had hitherto laid upon the shoulders of the impetuous Carmel. Either hypothesis brought light. I began to breathe again the air of hope, and if observed at that moment, must have presented the odd spectacle of a man rejoicing in his own shame and accepting with positive uplift, the inevitable stigma cast upon his honour by the suggestive sentence just hurled at him by an indignant witness.