George. You bought the coat from Evans, and
the man who wore that coat was seen in the
company of the murdered man the last time he
was seen alive. I knew there must be some
dreadful mistake. I knew you never lifted your
hand against any man's life, and that some one
else must have got possession of the coat; but
your mother said no, that you had worn it when
she saw you at Amherst, and nothing could
remove the impression. George, what did you do
with the coat you bought at Evans's?"

"I had it down here, sure enough,"
answered George, "and I did wear it when she
last saw me. I left it at Mr. Routh's afterwards,
by mistake, and took one of his abroad
with me; but this is a horrid mystery altogether.
Who is the man who has been murdered?
What is the motive?"

"I cannot tell you that, George," said Mrs.
Brookes; "but I will give you the papers, and
then you will know all, and you will understand
how much she suffered."

The old woman left George alone for a few
minutes, while she went to her bedroom to get
the newspapers which she locked securely away
at the bottom of a trunk. During her absence
the young man strode about the room
distractedly, trying in vain to collect his thoughts
and set them down steadily to the solution of
the terrible mystery which surrounded him.

"Here they are, George," said Ellen, as she
entered the room and handed him a roll of newspapers.
"Sit down here, by the window, and
try to read them quietly. I must leave you
now, and tell the servants who you are, and
that you are going to stay here to-night—there
must be no concealment now; thank God, it's
not wanted any longer. Perhaps out of all this
evil good may come, my boy."

He had sat down by the window, and was
eagerly opening the roll of paper, and seeking
the account of the murder. Mrs. Brookes
paused by his side for a moment, laid her
withered hand gently on his hair, and then left
him. A moment after he started up from his
chair, and cried out:

"Good God! the man was Deane!"

The shock of this discovery was extreme.
Wholly unable as he had been to account for
the coincidence which Mrs. Brookes's imperfect
story (for, like most persons of her class, she
was an unskilful narrator of facts) had unfolded
to him, he had never supposed his connexion
with it real, and now he saw it all, and in a
moment perceived the gravity of his situation.
The nameless man whom he had seen so often,
and yet known so slightly; concerning whom
he had speculated often and carelessly; whom
no one had recognised; whose singular dress the
waiter at the tavern had described in his
evidence; the date; all was conclusive. The man
murdered was Deane. But who was the
murderer? How was it that no one had recognised
the body? With all his mysterious ways, in spite
of the callous selfishness which had rendered him
indifferent to companionship save in the mere
pursuit of his pleasures, it seemed wonderful
that no one should have been able to identify him.

"There's Routh, now," said George to
himself, "he must have heard of the finding of the
body, he must have read the description of the
dress; he may have seen the man's fur coat
before, though I never did. To be sure, he did
not dine with us that day, but he knew where
Deane dined, and with. whom. What can Routh
have been about?"

These and a thousand questions of a similar
nature George Dallas put to himself, without
finding any answer to them, without stilling
the tumult in his mind. He tried to arrange
tiie circumstances in their order of occurrence,
and to think them out, but in vain; he could
not do so yet: all was confusion and vague
horror. He had not liked this man. Theirs had
been the mere casual association of convenience
and amusement— an association, perhaps, the
foremost of all those which he was firmly
determined never to renew; and yet he could not
regard its dreadful ending with indifference.
The life which had perverted George had not
hardened him, and he could not readily throw
off the impression created by the discovery
that the man with whom he had joined in the
pursuit of reckless and degrading pleasure had
died a violent death within so short a time of
their last meeting. When Mrs. Brookes came
into the room again, the expression of the
young man's face terrified her afresh.

"Ellen," he said, "this is a dreadful business,
apart from my unhappy complication with it,
and what it has cost my dear mother. I knew
this unhappy man; he was a Mr. Deane. I
dined with him at that tavern in the Strand.
I did wear that coat. All the circumstances are
correct, though all the inferences are false. I
begin to understand it all now; but who can
have murdered him, and for what motive, I
cannot conceive. The most natural thing in the
world was that they should suspect me, as the
man who wore the coat. Mr. Evans will recognise
me, no doubt, as he told Mr. Carruthers."

"No, no, George; the poor old man is dead,"
interrupted Mrs. Brookes.

"Dead?" said George. "Well, he seemed
an honest fellow, and I am sorry for it; but it
makes no difference in my position. When I
communicate with the police, I will admit all he
could prove."

"Must you do that, George?" asked Mrs.
Brookes, wistfully. She had a natural dread of
the law in the abstract.

"Of course I must, nurse; I can tell them
who the unfortunate man was, and account for
him up to a very late hour on the night of the
seventeenth of April."

"Take care, George," said the old woman.
"If you can't account for yourself afterwards,
you can't clear yourself."

The observation was shrewd and sensible.
George felt it so, and said, "Never mind that.
I am innocent, and when the time comes I shall
have no difficulty in proving myself innocent."

"You know best, George," said the old
woman, with a resigned sigh; "but  tell me,
who was this poor man?"

"Sit down and I will tell you all about it."