it is; the jury ought to see, and examine for themselves."

Charles took the key, and, accompanied by the awestruck servant, he made
his way by the back stairs to the door opening from the dressing-room,
which, as we have said, intervened between the valet's chamber and Sir
Wynston's. After a momentary hesitation, Charles turned the key in the
door, and stood.

"In the dark chamber of white death."

The shutters lay partly open, as the valet had left them some hours
before, on making the astounding discovery, which the partially admitted
light revealed. The corpse lay in the silk-embroidered dressing gown, and
other habiliments, which Sir Wynston had worn, while taking his ease in
his chamber, on the preceding night. The coverlet was partially dragged
over it. The mouth was gaping, and filled with clotted blood; a wide gash
was also visible in the neck, under the ear; and there was a thickening
pool of blood at the bedside, and quantities of blood, doubtless from
other wounds, had saturated the bedclothes under the body. There lay Sir
Wynston, stiffened in the attitude in which the struggle of death had
left him, with his stern, stony face, and dim, terrible gaze turned up.

Charles looked breathlessly for more than a minute upon this mute and
unchanging spectacle, and then silently suffered the curtain to fall back
again, and stepped, with the light tread of awe, again to the door. There
he turned back, and pausing for a minute, said, in a whisper, to the
attendant--

"And Merton did this?"