III
FACTS AND DEDUCTIONS
"Confusion now hath made his master-piece;
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord's anointed temple, and stolen thence
The life of the building."
Macbeth.
TURNING my attention back into the room where I was, I found the coroner consulting a memorandum through a very impressive pair of gold eye-glasses.
"Is the butler here?" he asked.
Immediately there was a stir among the group of servants in the corner, and an intelligent-looking, though somewhat pompous, Irishman stepped out from their midst and confronted the jury. "Ah," thought I to myself, as my glance encountered his precise whiskers, steady eye, and respectfully attentive, though by no means humble, expression, "here is a model servant, who is likely to prove a model witness." And I was not mistaken; Thomas, the butler, was in all respects one in a thousand and he knew it.
The coroner, upon whom, as upon all others in the room, he seemed to have made the like favorable impression, proceeded without hesitation to interrogate him.
"Your name, I am told, is Thomas Dougherty?"
"Yes, sir."
