The Shady ’un, in the vindictiveness of his temper, had a word or two to say to the stricken man, before he was marched off.

“You’re the bloke wot took ’old of me by the windpipe—ain’t yer?” he said, going close up to Philip, and thrusting his face forward at him. “Let this ’ere be a warnin’ to yer not ter tike ’old of other chap’s windpipes in futur’. You’ve done me rather a good turn—you ’ave, Mister Dandy Chater; there was a ’underd pound a ’angin’ to you—for sich infermation as would lead to you bein’ nabbed—an’ that ’underd pound is mine. I calls all these ’ere gents to witness,” he cried, raising his voice, and looking round about him—“as I brought yer all to this place, an’ nabbed ’im meself. An’ I’m a goin’ ter stick to these ’ere noble coppers, till I gits my ’underd pound!”

Before Philip was marched away, he turned towards Madge—who stood with her face buried in her hands—and made one last appeal to her.

“Dear girl,” he said, in a voice scarcely above a whisper—“there is but one way to save me now—but one hope left for me. Before God I am innocent. Find Dr. Cripps!”

There was no time to say more; they took him off at once—meeting, at the very door of the place, the doctor who had been sent for to examine the dead man. Madge followed the little party out, and saw Philip placed in a cab, with three constables inside and another on the box—and driven off; the Shady ’un—still in pursuit of his “’underd pound”—running after the cab, as if his very life depended on keeping it in sight.

In the stress of the moment Madge Barnshaw had lost all idea of time or place—indeed of everything. She quite forgot in what neighbourhood she stood or at what hour; and was only roused by hearing a voice address her.

“I asks yer pardon, young lady—for a speakin’ of sich a trim built craft, without leave—but this ain’t no place for you to be a standin’ about alone in. If so be as you’ve lost yer way, put yer faith in a old mariner as knows the points of Life’s compass a bit, an’ let ’im tow yer into wotever ’arbour you may be bound for.”

This extraordinary speech was delivered at such a rapid rate, and in so hoarse a whisper that Madge had no time to interpose a word, or to check the flow of words. Moreover, on looking at the face of the speaker, whatever indignation she might have been disposed to feel melted away; for it was a good kind honest face—ruddy with much exposure to wind and weather, and fringed with a luxuriant growth of tangled hair.

“My lass—I’m a married man—(an’ well I knows it, w’en Mrs. Quist ain’t got ’er temper ironed out straight!)—and there ain’t no ’arm in me. But there’s a few craft of a queer rig in these waters—and you’ll do well not to stay in ’em.”

Madge made up her mind at once to trust him; explained briefly that she knew nothing of the neighbourhood, and had merely come there to keep an appointment. And then, without more ado, she suddenly turned round—made a frantic effort to stand upright—and dropped into the man’s arms. The scenes through which she had passed so recently had utterly unnerved her, and Miss Madge Barnshaw was lying in a dead faint in the arms of Captain Peter Quist.

The Captain’s first thought was to shout for help; his next, to carry the girl to some place where he could procure something which would revive her. Glancing about him eagerly, he caught sight of the lighted windows of The Three Watermen; and, without a moment’s delay, half carried and half supported her through the door, and into the little private bar.

Only one person happened to be in that bar at the time—a little man, seated in a corner, half asleep, with a glass of spirits beside him. The Captain, entering hurriedly with his burden, looked round, and cried out—“Give me some brandy—quick! an’ tell me w’ere I can find a doctor.”

At the mention of that last word, the little man in the corner staggered to his feet; swayed uneasily for a moment; and then came towards the Captain, with what dignity he could muster on such short notice. But his eyes no sooner fell upon the Captain, and then upon the girl, than he uttered a sort of cry—spun completely round like an unsteady top—and made for the door. But the Captain had recognised him, too; and caught him just as he was slipping out.

“’Ere ’old ’ard, mess-mate—’old ’ard,” exclaimed the Captain, who had deposited his burden on a bench and was able to give, for the moment, his undivided attention to his captive. “You’re a man as I wants to see, in ’arf a shake, so soon as I’ve attended to this ’ere young lady. An’ per’aps, as there don’t seem to be nobody else ’andy—p’raps you can tell me w’ere I’ll find a doctor?”

The little man—no other than Dr. Cripps—was cowed by the superior size and strength of the Captain and capitulated. “I—I am a doctor,” he said, giving himself a sort of shake, probably with the object of pulling himself together—and bending over Madge, who had begun to open her eyes, and to look about her. “Ah—nothing more than a temporary faintness, as I imagined.”

He turned round suddenly, and went to the bar, and hammered on it with his fists, and shouted out in a voice sufficient to be heard at the other end of the house. “Hi—hi—why the devil don’t you look after business, all of you! Here’s brandy wanted—and all sorts of things—and yet any one might die, and be buried forty times over, before you’d turn a hair. Hi—hi—where are you all?”

A surly-looking man came slowly out of an inner room, and advanced to the bar. “All right—all right—you needn’t shout the ’ouse down, Dr. Cripps,” he said, stooping to get what was wanted, and glancing carelessly at the girl as he did so.

But it happened that the brandy was not required; for the mere mention of the name of Cripps was sufficient to rouse Madge, as nothing else could have done. She sprang up at once, and caught the little man by the shoulders, and looked into his eyes. Cripps, for his part, began to shake and to tremble very much; for he remembered the fifty pounds she had paid him, and wondered whether or not she wanted it back.

“Are you Dr. Cripps?” she asked, staring at him intently. “Yes—I see you are. What Providence has sent you to me at this time!”

“Madam,” said the Doctor, feebly, “if it would be any use for me to deny my own identity I would most willingly do so. I have been hunted and badgered to an extent beyond all belief; I have been dragged about in the dead of night—sworn at—carried miles on hay waggons, without a chance of obtaining natural and necessary refreshments; and all because my name happens to be Cripps. But I give in, Madam; I am vanquished; do what you will with me—but let me finish my liquor.” He walked across to where his glass stood, and drained it, and then looked expressively at the Captain. But nothing came of that; and at last beginning dimly to see, in the coming of these two people—each connected, in such a different fashion, with his recollections of Dandy Chater—something which he had to face, whispered the landlord over the bar for a moment, and then turned again to them.

“If you want me—if you have anything private to say,” he said—“you had better come upstairs; there is a room there, of which I can claim the use.”

“And in which you an’ me met some little time back,” said the Captain, nudging him.

Cripps led the way upstairs, and ushered them into the same room in which the meeting had been held not so long before. Carefully shutting the door, he motioned to them to be seated, and stood looking at them curiously, and waiting for them to speak.

“A day or two since,” began Madge, speaking with much eagerness, and looking straight at the Doctor, “I paid you a large sum for certain information concerning Mr. Dandy Chater——”

“’Ullo!” broke in the Captain, staring from one to the other. “I asks yer pardon, Miss—but I ’adn’t no idea, w’en I took yer in tow, as you was acquainted with my ole friend Phil.”

She looked at him in perplexity. “Nor am I,” she said slowly. “I spoke of Mr. Dandy Chater, who has been recaptured, and is to stand his trial to-morrow for murder.”

“Dandy Chater is the false flag as ’e’s bin a sailin’ under,” replied the Captain. “But, anyways—call ’im Dandy Chater, or Phil Crowdy—or Phil Chater—’e’s my pal, and I’m beatin’ up these ’ere quarters for to find ’im.”

Again there flashed through Madge’s mind the words the Doctor had spoken, about the one man living, and the other dead; again there seemed to ring in her ears the words of Ogledon, when he had confessed to her that he had killed Dandy Chater. Yet that same Dandy Chater had stood—alive and well—in the hut by the river; that same Dandy Chater was now on his way to Chelmsford Jail!

“He said to-night,” she said, turning to Cripps—“that I must find you—that you could save him. I have heard that the trial will be held to-morrow. Won’t you help me; won’t you tell me something more than you told the other day? Think in what a state of mind I am now left! The one man has been murdered; the other, of whom you spoke, is either Dandy Chater, or a total stranger to me. How am I to find out?”

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but the Captain suddenly raised his hand, and checked him. “Avast!” he said hoarsely—“I’ve got the bearings of this ’ere business—an’ I’ve got it from Phil ’isself. An’ if so be as this ’ere young lady ’ll bear with me, she shall ’ave the straight of it. Dandy Chater—own twin brother to my pal Philip Crowdy, or Philip Chater—was took out of the river by this ’ere gent an’ myself a while back. I ’ad my reasons fer sayin’ nothink, an’ I cut an’ run.”

“I, too, had my reasons,” said Cripps, in a low voice—“for I feared Ogledon, and my own connection with him, and I suspected that Ogledon had killed him.”

Madge had laid her head down on the grimy table, and was weeping bitterly. “Then it is true,” she said, in a whisper—“Dandy Chater is dead!”

“Steady, my lass!” said the Captain, laying his rough hand lightly on her shoulder—“Don’t give way; for there’s summink I’ve got to tell you.”

She raised her head, and looked full into his eyes. Kindly eyes they were, and they smiled at her sympathetically.

“A long while ago, my lass, there was a cruel wrong done—a bright lad cut out of ’is ’ome, an’ all that should ’ave bin ’is, an’ cast adrift, many miles across the sea, without a name—an’ with the brand of ’Bastard’ upon ’im. That lad was my pal Phil Chater; an’ ’e was the twin brother of Dandy Chater.”

Again the words singing in her ears—“The one living—the other dead!”

“Think on it, my lass,” went on the Captain gently. “The one boy—an’ ’im the youngest—brought up in luxury, an’ with powdered lacqueys for to wait on ’im at every turn; the other—an’ ’im the eldest—sent miles across the sea, an’ roughin’ it like any common child. Lost in the bush, ’e was—pitched about from one place to another—’omeless, friendless, without a compass. But—an’ mark you this, my lass—if ever a boy steered ’isself straight by the stars o’ God, that boy Phil did. An’ when at last ’e comes ’ome, with no thought in ’is ’eart of anythink but a ’earty greetin’ for ’is brother, an’ a share-and-share alike business with that brother—an’ finds ’im dead—wot do ’e do? I put it to you, Miss—wot do my pal Phil do?”

She looked at him, with a brighter face, and slowly shook her head.

“My pal Phil finds as that brother of ’is loved a young gel—(an’ I don’t need look far, for to find that young gel to-night!)—an’ was loved by ’er. Phil is took for the real Dandy by that young gel—an’ ’e loves ’er! Bein’ afeard that, if she knowed the truth, she would cast ’im off, ’e takes ’is brother’s place—’is brother’s sins—dips ’is clean ’ands, so to speak, in the blood that guilty brother shed—an’ all—mark you this, my lass—all for love of that young gel. An’, for love of ’er—the Judge will cry ‘Death!’ on Phil Chater to-morrer!”

The Captain, in his honest excitement and admiration, had risen to his feet, and waved one arm above his head. Madge had risen, too, with almost equal excitement.

“There was one man as could ’ave saved ’im—a man of the name of Ogledon——”

“Ogledon is dead,” said Madge. “He died to-night, and can do neither good nor harm any more. But we”—she looked round quickly at both men—“we can save him; we can prove to all the world that this man is innocent, and is suffering for another. The trial is to-morrow—the first on the day’s list. We must reach Chelmsford to-morrow morning; we must save this man!”

The Captain looked at her, in an excess of admiration. “My lass,” he said slowly—“I ain’t surprised that my pal Phil should ’ave gorn through wot ’e ’as, for sich a gel! I’d ’ave disowned ’im, if ’e’d done less!”

The sun is shining brightly outside the crowded court-house; and men and women, densely packed within the walls, glance up at the grimy windows, and from them to the prisoner, and wonder, perhaps, what he is thinking about. The prisoner, for his part, scarcely makes a movement—scarcely turns his weary eyes round when any one speaks. For hope has gone out of him; the battle has been fought and lost; the murderer of the real Dandy Chater is dead and has carried his secret into another Place where all secrets are known. The crowd of faces about him bears but one stamp upon it all—hard, unrelenting, vengeful, every face there looks upon him with certainty as a dead man and is glad to think that he gets what he deserves.

There has been—as there always is in such cases—much eloquence on both sides—and some dramatic moments. At the present the jury are a little tired of it, and the Judge palpably nods; for the whole thing is such a foregone conclusion. The great man who has come down specially instructed by the Treasury, has pointed out that this, gentlemen, is a case in which no considerations of social standing, birth or position must be allowed to weigh. Indeed, gentlemen of the most intelligent jury, in the most intelligent country of the world, if it be possible to make it a little hotter for the prisoner than is made already, then, gentlemen, clearly it is your duty to make it hotter. For this man—(a most desperate character you must understand, gentlemen—as witness the cloud of police about the dock and even in the dock with him)—this man had the advantages of a great name—a fine position—much property. Yet, gentlemen, what have you heard of him? He stands before you a convicted forger, bank robber—burglar—and as you will have thrust down your throats a little more, gentlemen, a murderer! You have had a most honest gentleman here to-day on whom stolen notes were passed to cover the amount of a forgery committed by the prisoner on his greatest friend. You have heard of transactions whereby the estate handed down to the prisoner has been gradually sapped away by riotous living until not one stick of it remains that is not encumbered or bartered away. And to-day, gentlemen, in effect, behold the prisoner brought before you to receive his just doom!

All this and much more from the learned gentleman instructed by the Treasury. A movement in Court as the learned gentleman sits down and the prisoner turns his eyes in the direction of a new voice.

The new voice belongs to Mr. Andrew Banks, rising young barrister; and Mr. Andrew Banks is disposed to be flippant. For it must not be understood, gentlemen of the jury, that because a man of the station of life of the prisoner has run through a fortune—or half-a-dozen fortunes for the matter of that—and has made a mistake in the exuberance of his heart in signing some one else’s name instead of his own—it must really not be imagined, gentlemen, that that man for that reason is capable of the atrocious crime with which he stands charged. In fact, this rising young barrister would have the gentlemen of the jury believe that the fact of his having done these things and done them in an open-handed devil-may-care gentlemanly fashion, rather redounds to his credit than otherwise—and goes indeed far to prove him incapable of such a crime as this. The rising young barrister would beg to call the attention of this most intelligent jury to the witnesses relied upon for the prosecution. One—the witness in regard to the forgery and the stolen notes—is a sixty per-cent. money-lender who has doubtless bled the prisoner pretty freely for years; the other—and a most unwilling witness it must be remembered, gentlemen—is a former servant of the prisoner and now on his own confession out of a situation. In a word, gentlemen of the jury, this rising young barrister absolutely flouts the testimony of the witnesses for the prosecution; has a little to say about hearths and homes and British liberties; and sits down amid a little murmur of applause.

But the rising young barrister is not so sanguine as he appears, for he leans across towards his learned brother from the Treasury and whispers before that gentleman rises again—“Devilish uphill work! Can’t get a word out of him—won’t suggest any course of defence at all.”

A few more words from the prosecution—wholly unnecessary words, for the jury are whispering and have obviously made up their minds. Then amid a silence the Judge sums up; would evidently be merciful if he could; but is compelled to point out all the most damning facts against the prisoner—his desperate attempts to regain his liberty—the absence of any evidence to rebut the weight of testimony brought forward by the prosecution. In a word, gentlemen of the jury, your course is clear before you, and you are called upon to do your duty.

A whispering—a rustling—and a nodding of heads among the jurymen; for it is not even necessary for them to retire. Then amid a silence greater even than before the usual questions are put and the verdict—known long ago to every man and every woman in the Court—is spoken in one word. Guilty!

As though that word loosed the pent-up emotions and passions of the crowded place, and as though the grim satisfaction at the supposed justice of the thing can no longer be suppressed, a great cheer breaks out and rolls through the Court and out through echoing corridors into the street itself; where it is taken up by hundreds of throats and sent on and on to fill the town. Then following immediately on it and as suddenly as though no sound had been raised, fell a death-like silence; for Judge and prisoner are face to face—eye to eye. But though he were asked a thousand times, the prisoner has nothing to offer—except the simple words—“I am innocent.” Men whisper each other that he seems stunned.

Some one glides behind the Judge and fits a square of black on his wig. The Judge has actually opened his mouth to speak, when there comes a sudden commotion at the doors; cries of remonstrance; people thrusting this way and that; and foremost of a little knot of people who seem to be fighting their way in—a woman.

She stops for nothing—will be stopped by nothing. Men fall back from before her as though she had some power above mere humanity. Philip Chater turning towards where she comes, has a dim idea that Cripps—staggering and waving his arms; Betty Siggs, with her arms stretched out towards him; Captain Quist struggling fiercely with a gigantic constable—are all about that central figure. Then the imperious voice of the woman rings out above all the tumult.

“Stop—in God’s name! That man is not Dandy Chater!”