Tales of the Wonder Club, Volume II

by M. Y. Halidom

"Do not be too sure," said Claribel. "We must examine into the affair."

"Oh, that is easily done," said I; "but even should he not have departed, if he should have changed his mind and remained here, what does that prove? Besides, what motive could a gentleman have in taking the life of a poor, unknown, itinerant pedlar?"

"To lay the blame on John Archer, his rival, and get him into trouble," was my friend's reply. "Do you not think him capable?"

"I think him capable of anything that's bad," said I; "but that's not the point. You must, first of all, have reason enough on your side to prove that he did, which you have not. Look, now, at the evidence against young Archer. A young man returns home to his family after midnight, his clothes disordered and bloodstained, his gun discharged, and the butt end of it clotted with blood. When questioned, he is unable to give any satisfactory account of himself. Says he remembers nothing but having accepted one glass of wine from a pedlar. He relates that he woke up towards midnight and discovered that he had been sleeping for hours in the open air, near to the spot where the body of the pedlar is found on the day following.

"His friends do not believe him guilty because, forsooth, he has earned a reputation for truthfulness, steadiness, and sobriety; yet might not the opposite party contend that it was not impossible that he might, once in his life, have broken through his custom of rigid abstinence, and in a moment of intoxication, picking a quarrel with the pedlar, first discharged his gun at him—for, remember that the bullet extracted from the pedlar's shoulder has been recognised as Archer's bullet—and afterwards, finding his adversary not mortally wounded, had hastened his death by knocking out his brains with the butt end of his rifle. That he had afterwards himself fallen into a drunken sleep and entirely forgotten the events of the preceding evening is not at all impossible. This would be the more charitable way of looking at the affair; but, alas, there is another circumstance that puts it in a more serious light, and that is the hiding of the body. The body has been discovered in a ditch, carefully concealed from view by weeds and brambles. This argues reason. Is it probable that a man who commits homicide in a drunken brawl, being so drunk at the time as to fall down on the damp ground and sleep there the whole night through, that he should have been sufficiently master of himself to drag off the body of his victim and successfully conceal it from view in an overgrown ditch?"

"I cannot and will not believe him so base as to be guilty of wilful murder, neither will I believe that he committed homicide in a fit of intoxication. If he took the pedlar's life at all—I say if he did—why, then I lean towards the belief that he did it whilst under some evil spell of Richard de Chevron's. What do you believe, Molly?"

"No matter, dear, what I believe," said I; "I am a woman, like yourself, and too likely to be influenced by my feelings. I do not wish to believe him guilty, and should be very much surprised and horror-struck if he really were so, after the good opinion we all have had of him. But all that goes for nothing. I merely tell you how the world will judge him."

Poor Claribel could not help seeing that it was likely to go hard with John.

"Oh! if they should condemn him unjustly and execute him!" she cried, in agony.

Poor child! It was all I could do to comfort her. I told her the law was not rash in condemning anyone to death; that inquiries would be made, that the real perpetrator of the deed could not fail to be discovered, sooner or later, when he would suffer the penalty of the law, and the innocent man be acquitted. I had attempted to excite hopes in her that I myself dared hardly entertain, and that she, poor child, I could see, looked upon as poor consolation.