“The less you say the better,” remarked the spy; “comrades, this will be no bad night’s work for us—I can give evidence that this young fellow has been dogging the man who is murdered for some days past. Here we find him actually in the very room, or on the very threshold of it. It was a lucky job we happened to see the door wide open, and came in.”
“A clear case,” said another.
“There’s been many a man hung on half the evidence,” remarked a third.
Albert looked from one to the other for a few moments, perfectly bewildered at this new turn things had taken; then he said,—
“You do not—you cannot suspect me. Good God, ’twas I who called you here. I burst the door open below but a short time since.”
“Hear him—hear him,” cried the spy; “he will own to it all in a minute.”
“Unhand me,” cried Albert; “I am as innocent of this awful crime as you yourselves—I—”
He struggled to free himself from the grasp of the officer, but a couple more of them immediately closed with him, and in a few moments he found himself handcuffed and a prisoner.
“One of you stay,” cried the spy, “and don’t let any one come near the body. By Heaven, this is as ugly a job as ever I heard of!”
Albert clasped his manacled hands together, and a feeling of despair came over his heart—a prison—a scaffold, and an ignominious death seemed to be staring him in the face. How was he to extricate himself from the fearful circumstances by which he was now surrounded? Where now were all his fond hopes of once more seeing his Ada? The rush of wretched feelings across his mind was almost too great for mortal endurance, and had it not been for the stern, unpitying men by whom he was now surrounded, he could have shed tears in the bitterness of his despair.