on the stairs, owing to the thickness of the walls and the length
of the intervening passage; then it was evident that she had not
been in bed and asleep, since she was dressed when she roused the
house, and her bed had not been slept in. Moreover, the door at
the bottom of the stairs was ajar, and the key in the lock; and
it was noticed by the chaplain (an observant man) that the dress
she wore was stained with blood about the knees, and that there
were traces of small blood-stained hands low down on the
staircase walls, so that it was conjectured that she had really
been at the postern-door when her husband fell and, feeling her
way up to him in the darkness on her hands and knees, had been
stained by his blood dripping down on her. Of course it was
argued on the other side that the blood-marks on her dress might
have been caused by her kneeling down by her husband when she
rushed out of her room; but there was the open door below, and
the fact that the fingermarks in the staircase all pointed
upward.

The accused held to her statement for the first two days, in
spite of its improbability; but on the third day word was brought
to her that Herve de Lanrivain, a young nobleman of the
neighbourhood, had been arrested for complicity in the crime.
Two or three witnesses thereupon came forward to say that it was
known throughout the country that Lanrivain had formerly been on
good terms with the lady of Cornault; but that he had been absent
from Brittany for over a year, and people had ceased to associate
their names. The witnesses who made this statement were not of a
very reputable sort. One was an old herb-gatherer suspected of
witch-craft, another a drunken clerk from a neighbouring parish,
the third a half-witted shepherd who could be made to say