"I--I! Murder!" I could say no more.

I must hurry over this awful passage in my marvellous record. It
is torture to dwell on the details; and indeed I have so sought to chase
them from my recollection, that they only come back to me in hideous
fragments, like the incoherent remains of a horrible dream.

All that I need state is as follows: Early on the very morning on which I
had been arrested, a man, a stranger in the town, had privately sought Mr.
Vigors, and deposed that on the night of the murder, he had been taking
refuge from a sudden storm under shelter of the eaves and buttresses of a
wall adjoining an old archway; that he had heard men talking within the
archway; had heard one say to the other, "You still bear me a grudge."
The other had replied, "I can forgive you on one condition." That he then
lost much of the conversation that ensued, which was in a lower voice;
but he gathered enough to know that the condition demanded by the one was
the possession of a casket which the other carried about with him; that
there seemed an altercation on this matter between the two men, which, to
judge by the tones of voice, was angry on the part of the man demanding
the casket; that, finally, this man said in a loud key, "Do you still
refuse?" and on receiving the answer, which the witness did not overhear,
exclaimed threateningly, "It is you who will repent," and then stepped
forth from the arch into the street. The rain had then ceased, but by a
broad flash of lightning the witness saw distinctly the figure of the
person thus quitting the shelter of the arch,--a man of tall stature,
powerful frame, erect carriage. A little time afterwards, witness saw a
slighter and older man come forth from the arch, whom he could only
examine by the flickering ray of the gas-lamp near the wall, the
lightning having ceased, but whom he fully believed to be the person he