ransacked, but no property carried off. A
beechen cudgel was picked up in the room, but
on the body there were no marks of blows. An
apparently sure clue to the discovery of the
murderer lay on the floor. There was picked up, just
under the bed, and about six inches from the
shoulder of the corpse, a packet of six papers,
tied round with thread. Upon opening the
packet, these papers were found to be all written
in German. Three of the six papers were a
book called a service-book— being the credentials
furnished in Germany to craftsmen and others— a
sort, of thing unknown in England; a certificate
of birth, and a certificate of baptism; all three
purporting to belong to Karl Kranz, of Schandau,
in Upper Saxony, and the first containing,
as is usual in such documents, a description of
his person. The other three of the six papers
did not suggest any connexion with Kranz.
They were, a letter without direction, soliciting
relief from some female personage of quality,
and signed " Adolf Mohn;" another letter, only
three or four days old, in the handwriting of a
German lady, resident in London, where she is
eminent as an opera singer; this letter, bearing
date the 7th of June, or the preceding Friday;
lastly, there was a slip of paper with a number of
addresses within it.

There could be no doubt that the person who
left this packet of papers in the chamber was
the murderer, or a companion of the murderer,
and suspicion was of course directed towards
Germans. There soon came forward several
persons who had seen two Germans in the
neighbourhood at about the time of the murder,
and who described the appearances of those two
men. The police were then everywhere on the
alert to apprehend persons answering the
description. A few weeks of vain search
elapsed, and then a destitute German was
arrested in London on some trivial charge,
whose appearance corresponded so well with the
description in the service-book, that he was
conjectured to be Karl Kranz. He was handed
over, therefore, to the police of the district in
which the murder was committed, and a
preliminary inquiry was held before magistrates at
three several sittings. At the first hearing, the
prisoner gave the name of Hallman, but at the
close of the second, he confessed that his real
name was Karl Kranz, and that he was the
owner of the documents bearing his name. He
was committed for trial.

The arguments for the prisoner's guilt
reduced themselves to three heads. First, he was
identified beyond question, both by his own
confession and by the testimony of a police-
officer brought from Saxony, as the owner of
the papers bearing his name, and the individual
to whom the service-book had been
delivered on the sixth of April. Secondly, there
was a witness who swore positively that he was
one of two foreigners seen near the spot on the
day preceding the murder: a testimony which
was supported by the statements, more or less
definite, of several other witnesses. For example,
John Brown said that he sat for one hour in a
public-house at Reigate, on the Monday, with two
men, who talked together in a foreign language.
One of those men was the prisoner. He saw him
again at Newgate among a dozen others, and
singled him out without a moment's hesitation.
"I cannot," said this witness, "haye been
mistaken." The potman at the public-house said:
"On the Sunday morning, two foreigners, one
short and dark, the other taller and fairer, came
to the house and stayed there the whole day,
except that about midday the shorter one went out
for a little while, to buy flour. They both slept
there and stayed till two o'clock on Monday,
when both went out for about half an hour, but
returned. They both left together finally, at
about four o'clock on Monday." He was in and
out of the room all the time they were there,
and saw them repeatedly. " The prisoner," said
this witness, " is the taller of the two men."
Mary Roberts, servant to Mr. Blount, brush and
string-dealer, of Reigate, said that when she
heard two men talking in a foreign language
in her master's shop, on the Monday afternoon,
she peeped through the small window, and
watched them while her mistress was selling
them a ball of string. " I believe," said this
witness, " the prisoner is one of them. He looks
very much like him." And Mrs. Blount herself,
who sold to one of the two foreigners the ball of
cord on the Monday, said: " The prisoner's
height and general appearance are very much
like those of the taller of the two men,
but his features I cannot realise." John
West said, that when in a thicket, within
two miles of Wegby, on the Monday evening,
at seven o'clock, he saw two men under
a tree, about ten yards from him. They were
talking in a tongue he could not understand.
"The prisoner's clothes and appearance," said
this witness, " are much like those of the taller
one of the two men, but I cannot swear he is
the same." Here let us interpolate the fact that
the roughly-cut cudgel found in the bed-room of
the murdered woman, corresponded with the
broken branch of a tree found in this thicket.
Josiah Lock said he saw two men at Wegby
walking towards Reigate, on the Sunday afternoon,
about four. One was short and dark, the
other taller and fairer. He saw them again at
about seven in the evening on the next day,
and it struck him that he had seen the same two
men going in the opposite direction the day
before. " I saw," said this witness, "the taller
one, the next time, at the third examination at
Reigate, and I knew him again by his
features."

The third argument for the prisoner's guilt was,
that there was found tied round a shirt left by
him at his lodgings, a piece of hempen cord, of
precisely the same kind and the same appearance
as the pieces with which the limbs of the victim
had been bound, and matching as precisely with
the bulk from which the ball sold by Mrs.
Blount to the two foreigners, in Reigate, had
been severed. The cord, too, was of an unusual
character. Apparently, of the kind commonly
used for packing bales, it was in fact to be