The following Saturday was the day fixed for the opening of the commission at Helstonleigh. It soon came round, and the streets in the afternoon wore their usual holiday appearance. The high sheriff's procession went out to meet the judges, and groups stood about, waiting and watching for its return. Amongst other people blocking up the way, might be observed the portly person of Sergeant Delves. He strolled along, seeming to look at nothing, but his keen eye was everywhere. It suddenly fell upon Mr. Winthorne, who was picking his way through the crowd as fast as he could do so, apparently in a hurry. Hurry or not, Sergeant Delves stopped him, and drew him to a safe spot beyond the reach of curious ears.

"I was looking for you, Mr. Winthorne," said Delves in a confidential tone. "I say—this tale, that Dare will succeed in establishing an alibi, is it reliable?"

"Why—who the mischief can have been setting that afloat?" returned the lawyer, in tones of the utmost astonishment, not unmixed with vexation.

"Dare himself was my informant," replied the sergeant. "I was in the prison just now, and saw him in the yard with the turnkey. He called me aside, and told me he was as good as acquitted."

"Then he is an idiot for his pains. He had no right to talk of it, even to you."

"I am dark," carelessly returned Delves. "I don't wish ill to the Dares, and wouldn't work it to them; as perhaps some of them could tell you," he added significantly. "What about this acquittal that he talks of?"

"There's no doubt he will be acquitted. He will prove an alibi."

"Is it a got-up alibi?" asked the plain-speaking sergeant.

"No. And as far as I go, I would not lend myself to getting up anything false," observed the solicitor. "He has said from the first, you know, that he was not near the house at the time, and so it will turn out."

"Has he confessed where he was, after all his standing out?"

"Yes; to me: it will be disclosed at the trial."

"He was after no good, I know," nodded the sergeant oracularly.

Mr. Winthorne raised his eyebrows, and slightly jerked his shoulders. The movement may have meant anything or nothing. He did not reply in words.

Sergeant Delves fell into a reverie. He roused himself from it to take a searching gaze at the lawyer. "Sir," said he, and he could hardly have spoken more earnestly had his life depended on it, "tell me the truth out-and-out. Do you, yourself, from the depths of your own judgment, believe Herbert Dare to have been innocent?"

"Delves, as truly as that you and I now stand here, I honestly believe that he had no more to do with his brother's death than we had."

"Then I'm blest if I don't take up the other scent!" exclaimed Mr. Delves, slapping his thigh. "I did think of it once, but I dropped it again, so sure was I that it was Master Herbert."

"What scent is that?"

"Look here," said the sergeant—"but now it's my turn to warn you to be dark. There was a young woman met Anthony Dare the night of the murder, when he was going down to the Star and Garter. It's a young woman he did not behave genteel to some time back, as the ghost says in the song. She met him that night, and she gave him a bit of her tongue; not much, for he wouldn't stop to listen. But now, Mr. Winthorne, it has crossed my mind many times whether she might not have watched for his going home again, and followed him; followed him right into the dining-room, and done the mischief. I'll lay a guinea it was her!" added the sergeant, arriving at a hasty conclusion. "I shall look up again now."

"Do you mean that young woman in Honey Fair?" asked Mr. Winthorne.

"Just so. Her, and nobody else. The doubt has crossed me; but, as I say, I was so certain it was the brother, that I did not follow it up."

"Could a woman's feeble hand inflict such injuries?" debated the solicitor.

"'Feeble' be hanged!" politely rejoined the sergeant. "Some women have the fists of men; and the strength of 'em, too. You don't know 'em as we do. A desperate woman will do anything. And Anthony Dare, remember, had not his strength in him that night."

Mr. Winthorne shook his head. "That girl has no look of ferocity about her. I should question it being her. Let's see—what is her name?"

"Listen!" returned the sergeant. "When you have had half as much to do with people as I have, you'll have learnt not to go by looks. Her name is Caroline Mason."

At that moment the cathedral bells rang out, announcing the return of the procession, the advent of the judges. As if the sound reminded the lawyer of the speed of time, he hastily went on his way; leaving the sergeant to use his eyes and ears at the expense of the crowd.

"I wonder how the prisoners in the gaol feels?" remarked a woman whom the sergeant recognised as being no other than Mrs. Cross. She had just come out of a warehouse with her supply of work for the ensuing week.

"Ah, poor creatures!" responded another of the group, and that was Mrs. Brumm. "I wonder how young Dare likes it!"

"Or how old Dare likes it—if he can hear 'em all the way up at his office. They'll know their fate soon, them two."

In close vicinity to this colloquy was a young woman, drawn against the wall, under shelter of a projecting doorway. Her once good-looking face was haggard, and her clothes were scanty. It was for this reason, perhaps, that she appeared to shun observation. Sergeant Delves, apparently without any other design than that of working his way leisurely through the throng, edged himself up to her.

"Looking out for the show, Miss Mason?"

Caroline turned her spiritless eyes upon him. "I'm waiting till there's a way cleared for me to get through, without pushing against folks and contaminating 'em. What's the show to me, or me to it?"

"At the last assizes, in March, when the judges came in, young Anthony Dare made one in the streets, looking on," resumed the sergeant, chatting affably. "I saw him and spoke to him. And now he is gone where there's no shows to see."

She made no reply.

"The women there," pointing his thumb at the group of talkers hard by, "are saying that Herbert Dare won't like the sound of the college bells.—Hey, me! Look at those young toads of college boys, just let out of school!" broke off the sergeant, as a tribe of some twenty of the king's scholars came fighting and elbowing their way through the throng to the front. "They are just like so many wild colts! Maybe the prisoner, Herbert Dare, is now casting his thoughts back to the time when he made one of the band, and was as free from care as they are. It's not so long ago."

Caroline Mason asked a question somewhat abruptly. "Will he be found guilty, sir, do you think?"

The sergeant turned the tail of his keen eye upon her, and answered the question by asking another. "Do you?"

She shook her head. "I don't think he was guilty."

"You don't?"

"No, I don't. Why should one brother kill another?"

"Very true," coughed the sergeant. "But somebody must have done it. If Herbert Dare did not, who did?"

"Ah! who did? I'd like to know," she passionately added. "He had folks in this town that owed him grudges, had Mr. Anthony Dare."

"If my vision didn't deceive me, I saw you talking to him that very same night," carelessly observed the sergeant.

"Did you see me?" she rejoined, apparently as much at ease as the sergeant himself. "I had to do an errand at that end of the town, and I met him, and told him what he was. I hadn't spoke to him for months and months; for years, I think. I had slipped into doors, down entries, anywhere to avoid him, if I saw him coming; but a feeling came over me to speak to him then. I'm glad I did. I hope the truths I said to him went along with him to enliven him on his journey!"

"Did you see him after that, later in the evening?" resumed the inspector, putting the question sociably, and stretching his neck up to obtain a view of something at a distance.

"No, I didn't," she replied. "But I would, if I had thought it was going to be his last. I'd have bade him remember all his good works where he was going to. I'd almost have went with him, I would, to have heard how he answered for them, up there."

Caroline Mason glanced upwards to indicate the sky, when a loud flourish of trumpets from the advancing heralds sounded close upon them. As they rode up at a foot pace, they dropped their trumpets, and the mounted javelin-men quickly followed, their javelins in rest. A carriage or two; a few more officials; and then advanced the equipage of the high sheriff. Only one of the judges was in it, fully robed: a fine man, with a benign countenance. A grave smile was on it as he spoke to the sheriff, who sat opposite to him, his chaplain by his side.

Sergeant Delves's attention was distracted for an instant, and when he looked round again, Caroline Mason had disappeared. He just caught sight of her in the distance, winding her way through the crowd, her head down.

"Did she do it, or did she not?" cried the sergeant, in soliloquy. "Go on, go on, my lady, for the present; you are about to be a bit looked after."

How did the prisoners feel, and Herbert Dare amongst them, as the joyous sounds, outside, fell upon their ears; the blast of the trumpets, the sweetness of the bells, the stir of life: penetrating within the walls of the city and county prisons? Did they feel that the pomp and show, run after as a holiday sight, was only a cruel advent to them?—that the formidable and fiery vision in the scarlet robe and flowing wig, who sat in the carriage, bending his serene face upon the mob, collected to stare and shout, might prove the pronouncer of their doom?—a doom that should close the portals of this world upon them, and open those of eternity!