"Who is Godfrey Pitman, witness?"
"It was the lodger at the top of the house, sir. He had the front bedroom there--and a fine dance it was to carry his meals up. Missis gave him the offer of eating them in the little room off the kitchen, but I suppose he was too proud to come down. Anyway, he didn't come."
"Is he lodging there now?"
"Oh no, sir, he was only there a week and a day, and left on the Monday. He was a traveller in the spectacles line, he told me, passing through the town; which he likewise wore himself sometimes. Well, sir, I never see him go at all, and he didn't never give me a shilling for having waited on him and carried his trays up all them stairs."
The girl had told apparently what she knew, and the coroner requested Mrs. Jones to come in again. He questioned her about the lodger.
"It was a person of the name of Pitman," she answered, readily. "He was only passing through the town, and occupied the room for a week."
"Who was he?" asked the coroner. "Did you know him?"
"I didn't know him from Adam," answered Mrs. Jones, tartly; "I didn't know anything about him. I called him Alletha Rye's lodger, not mine, for it was she who picked him up. He may have told her all about himself, for aught I can say: she seemed to take a desperate fancy to him, and mended his travelling bag. He didn't tell me. Not but what he seemed a civil, respectable man."
"When did he leave you, Mrs. Jones?"
"On Monday, about half-past four, when he took the five o'clock train for Birmingham. He came to the inner shop door as he was going out, and thanked me for my kindness, as he called it, in taking him in at a pitch; he said it was not what every one would do for a stranger. Neither is it."