sought for, but was not found. His story of the 'two men in white,'
who had previously attacked him in the garden, was a lie, he said. I
may add that it was not the lie of a sane man. Perry was conspicuously
crazy.

He went on with his fables. His mother and brother, he declared, had
often asked him to tell them when his master went to collect rents. He
had done so after Harrison started for Charringworth on the morning of
August 16. John Perry next gave an account of his expedition with his
brother in the evening of the fatal day, an account which was
incompatible with his previous tale of his doings and with the
authentic evidence of Reed and Pierce. Their honest version destroyed
Perry's new falsehood. He declared that Richard Perry and he had
dogged Harrison, as he came home at night, into Lady Campden's
grounds; Harrison had used a key to the private gate. Richard followed
him into the grounds; John Perry, after a brief stroll, joined him
there and found his mother (how did she come thither?) and Richard
standing over the prostrate Harrison, whom Richard incontinently
strangled. They seized Harrison's money and meant to put his body 'in
the great sink by Wallington's Mill.' John Perry left them, and knew
not whether the body was actually thrown into the sink. In fact, _non
est inventus_ in the sink, any more than in the bean-rick. John next
introduced his meeting with Pierce, but quite forgot that he had also
met Reed, and did not account for that part of his first story, which
Reed and Pierce had both corroborated. The hat, comb, and band John
said that he himself had carried away from Harrison's body, had cut
them with his knife, and thrown them into the highway. Whence the
blood on the band came he neglected to say.

On the strength of this impossible farrago of insane falsehoods, Joan