just enough suggestion in them to fire the public mind and make me,
for one, anticipate an immediate word from Mr. Jeffrey calculated
to establish the alibi he had failed to make out on the day we
talked with him. But no such word came. His memory still played
him false, and no alternative was left but to pursue the official
inquiry in the line suggested by the interview just recounted.

No proceeding in which I had ever been engaged interested me as did
this inquest. In the first place, the spectators were of a very
different character from the ordinary. As I wormed myself along to
the seat accorded to such witnesses as myself, I brushed by men of
the very highest station and a few of the lowest; and bent my head
more than once in response to the inquiring gaze of some fashionable
lady who never before, I warrant, had found herself in such a scene.
By the time I reached my place all the others were seated and the
coroner rapped for order.

I was first to take the stand. What I said has already been fully
amplified in the foregoing pages. Of course, my evidence was
confined to facts, but some of these facts were new to most of the
persons there. It was evident that a considerable effect was
produced by them, not only on the spectators, but upon the
witnesses themselves. For instance, it was the first time that the
marks on the mantel-shelf had been heard of outside the major's
office, or the story so told as to make it evident that Mrs. Jeffrey
could not have been alone in the house at the time of her death.

A photograph had been taken of those marks, and my identification
of this photograph closed my testimony.