"Gone from the table?"
"Gone from the room."
"Humph! when did you see her again?"
"In a minute. She came in at the library door as we went out."
"Anything in her hand?"
"Not as I see."
"Did you miss anything from the table?"
"I never thought to look, sir. The table was nothing to me. I was only thinking of going for the doctor, though I knew it was of no use."
"Whom did you leave in the room when you went out?"
"The cook, sir, and Molly, sir, and Miss Eleanore."
"Not Miss Mary?"
"No, sir."
"Very well. Have the jury any questions to put to this man?"
A movement at once took place in that profound body.
"I should like to ask a few," exclaimed a weazen-faced, excitable little man whom I had before noticed shifting in his seat in a restless manner strongly suggestive of an intense but hitherto repressed desire to interrupt the proceedings.
"Very well, sir," returned Thomas.
But the juryman stopping to draw a deep breath, a large and decidedly pompous man who sat at his right hand seized the opportunity to inquire in a round, listen-to-me sort of voice:
"You say you have been in the family for two years. Was it what you might call a united family?"
"United?"
"Affectionate, you know,—on good terms with each
