tice allowed no mercy. And thus, Lionel, William Losely was prosecuted, tried, and sentenced to seven years' transportation. By pleading guilty, the term was probably made shorter than it otherwise would have been." Lionel continued too agitated for words. The Colonel, not seeming to heed his emotions, again ran his eye over the MS. "I observe here that there are some queries entered as to the evidence against Losely. The solicitor whom, when I heard of his arrest, I engaged and sent clown to the place on his behalf—" "You did! Heaven reward you I " sobbed out Lionel. " But my father?—where was he?" "Then?—in his grave." Lionel breathed a deep sigh, as of thankfulness. "The lawyer, I say—a sharp fellow—was of opinion that if Losely had refused to plead guilty, he could have got him off in spite of his first confession—turned the suspicion against some one else. In the passage where the nail was picked up, there was a door into the park. That door was found unbolted in the inside the next morning; a thief might therefore have thus entered, and passed at once into the study. The nail was dis- covered close by that door; the thief might have dropped it on putting out his light, which, by the valet's account, he must have done, when he was near the door in question, and required the light no more. Another circumstance in Losely's favor. Just outside the door, near a laurel-bush, was found the fag-end of one of those small rose-colored wax-lights which are often placed in lucifer match-boxes. If this had been used by the thief, it would seem as if, extinguishing the light before he stepped into the air, he very naturally jerked away the morsel of taper left, when, in the next moment, he was out of the house. But Losely would not have gone out of the house; nor was he, nor any one about the premises, ever known to make use of that kind of taper, which would rather appertain to the fashionable fopperies of a London dandy. You will have observed, too, the valet had not seen the thief's face. His testimony rested solely on the colors of a cloak, which, on cross-examination, might have gone for nothing. The dog had barked before the light was seen. It was not the light that made him bark. He wished to get out of the court-yard; that looked as if there were some stranger in the grounds beyond. Following up this clew, the lawyer ascertained that a strange man had been seen in the park toward the gray of the evening, walking up in the direction of the house. And here comes the strong point. At the rail- way staiion, about five miles from Mr. Gunston's, a strange
