"You did not see a tramp come into the yard, walk around to the kitchen door, wait a moment as if hesitating whether he would rap, and then turn and come back again without doing so?"
"No, sir."
The coroner drew a piece of paper before him and began figuring on it. Earnestly, almost wildly, the young man watched him, drawing a deep breath and turning quite pale as the other paused and looked up.
"Yet," affirmed the coroner, as if no delay had occurred since he received his last answer, "such a person did approach the house while you were in it, and if you had stood where you say, you must have seen him."
It was a vital thrust, a relentless presentation of fact, and as such shook the witness out of his lately acquired composure. Glancing hastily about, he sought the assistance of some one both capable and willing to advise him in this crisis, but seeing no one, he made a vigorous effort and called together his own faculties.
"Sir," he protested, a tremor of undisguised anxiety finding way into his voice, "I do not see how you make that all out. What proof have you that this tramp of which you speak came to the house while I was in it? Could he not have come before? Or, what was better, could he not have come after?"
The ringing tone with which the last question was put startled everybody. No such sounds had issued from his lips before. Had he caught a glimpse of hope, or was he driven to an extremity in his defence that forced him to assert himself? The eyes of Miss Firman and of a few other women began to soften, and even the face of Mr. Byrd betrayed that a change was on the verge of taking place in his feelings.
But the coroner's look and tone dashed cold water on this young and tender growth of sympathy. Passing over to the witness the paper on which he had been scribbling, he explained with dry significance:
"It is only a matter of subtraction and addition, Mr. Hildreth. You have said that upon quitting this house you went directly to the depot, where you arrived barely in time to jump on the train as it was leaving the station. Now, to walk from this place to the depot at any pace you would be likely to use, would occupy—well, let us say seven minutes. At two minutes before twelve, then, you were still in this house. Well!" he ejaculated, interrupting himself as the other opened his lips, "have you any thing to say?"
"No," was the dejected and hesitating reply.