Roland Yorke / A Sequel to "The Channings"

by Mrs. Henry Wood

A smile crossed the lip of the police agent. "Considering the two gentlemen you mention are in the law, it doesn't say much for their forethought, to rash at destroying the only proof there may remain to us of anybody else's being guilty."

"But then, you know, they do not admit that any one else could have been guilty," replied Frank Greatorex. "At least my brother does not; and Kene only looks upon it as a possible case of insanity. Do you want to see the paper? I have it in my pocket."

"Perhaps you'd not mind leaving it with me for a day or two," said Mr. Butterby. "I'll forward it up safe to you when I've done with it."

Frank Greatorex took the paper from his pocketbook and handed it to the speaker. It was folded inside an envelope now. Mr. Butterby received possession of it and attended his guests to the door, where the fly was waiting.

"You'll have to drive fast, Thompson," he said to the man. And Thompson, touching his hat to the officer, who was held in some awe by the city natives, whipped his horse into a canter.

It was upon this interview that Mr. Butterby ruminated as he took his tea on the Friday evening. In his own opinion it was the most unreasonable thing in the world, that anybody should throw doubt upon the verdict. Nothing but perversity. He judged it--and he was a keen-sighted man--to be fully in accordance with the facts, as given in evidence. Excepting perhaps in one particular. Had he been on the jury he should have held out for a verdict of insanity.

"They are but a set of bumble-heads at the best," soliloquised Mr. Butterby, respectfully alluding to the twelve men who had returned the verdict, as he took a large bite out of his last piece of well-buttered pikelet. "Juries for the most part always are: if they have got any brains they send them a wool-gathering then. Hemming, the butter-and-cheese man, told me he did say something about insanity; and he was foreman, too; but the rest of 'em and the coroner wouldn't listen to it. It don't much matter, for he got the burial rites after all, poor fellow: but if I'd been them, I should have gave him the benefit of the doubt."

Stopping in his observations to put the rest of the pikelet in his mouth, Mr. Butterby went on again as he ate it.

"It might have been that, insanity; but as to the other suspicion, there's no grounds whatever for it on the face of things at present. If such is to be raised I shall have to set to work and hunt 'em up. Create 'em as it were. 'Don't spare money,' says that young clergyman last night when he sat here; 'your expenses shall be reimbursed to you with interest.' As if I could make a case out of nothing! I'm not a French Procureur-Imperial."

Drinking down his tea at a draught, Mr. Butterby tried the teapot, lest a drop might be left in it still, turning it nearly upside down in the process. The result was, that the lid came open and a shower of tea-leaves descended on the tray.