"'Still, you returned the blow?'
"Guide passed a hand wearily over his forehead. 'I may have struck him back, sir—I was dazed, and I don't rightly remember. But before God I'll swear that I never lifted that pick to Andrew Walker—it was his pick.'
"'But,' I persisted, "Walker couldn't very conveniently have murdered himself.'
"'No, sir, no—no, he couldn't. I thought of that myself since I been in here, and I said to Mr. Barnes that perhaps somebody come into the carriage when I was knocked silly, and killed him; but Mr. Barnes he said that was absurd. Besides, who could have done it?'
"'Don't you know anybody, then, who would have wished for Walker's death?'
"'There was them that didn't like him,' said Guide, drearily.
"That was all I could get out of him, and I went away from the prison feeling very dissatisfied. I was stronger than ever in the belief that Guide was in no degree guilty, and yet for the life of me I did not see how to prove his innocence. He had not been a man of any strong character to begin with, and the shock of what he had gone through had utterly dazed him. It was hopeless to expect any reasonable explanation from him; he had resigned himself to puzzlement. If he had gone melancholy mad before he came up to trial, I should not have been one whit surprised.
"I brooded over the matter for a couple of days, putting all the rest of my practice out of thought, but I didn't get any forwarder with it. I hate to give anything up as a bad job, and in this case I felt that there was on my shoulders a huge load of responsibility. Guide, I had thoroughly persuaded myself, had not murdered Andrew Walker; as sure as the case went into court, on its present grounding, the man would be hanged out of hand; and I persuaded myself that then I, and I alone, should be responsible for an innocent man's death.
"At the end of those two days only one course seemed open to me. It was foreign to the brief I held, but the only method left to bring in my client's innocence.
"I must find out who did really murder the man. I must try to implicate some third actor in the tragedy.