"About that very story of the empty rectory and the light in the church," he began, with Fuller—"about that perfectly true story," he added, wilfully, "which you told us yesterday. Did you tell it to anybody at the time?"
"Only Tom Ivey."
"Why only to him?"
"He asked me to keep that to myself."
"And did you?"
"I did my best, sir, but that slipped out one day when I was talking to——"
"Never mind his or her name. You did your best to keep the matter to yourself, but it slipped out one day in conversation. Now when did you last tell that true story, not counting yesterday, as fully and particularly as you told it here in court? Think. I want the exact date of the very last occasion."
"That was last Friday, sir—to-day's the 22nd—that would be the 18th of August."
"Last Friday, the 18th of August; a fatal day to me!" said Robert Carlton. "Thank you. That is all I want from you."
The justices put no question. The clerk did not re-examine. The witness was ordered to stand down. Then followed a short but heavy silence, pregnant with speculation as to the drift of all these questions and the object of so much unexplained insistence upon a date. It meant something. What could it mean? Carlton stood upright in the dock, calm, confident, inscrutable; it seemed a great many moments before the silence was broken by the formal tones of the clerk.