"Stevenson!" shouted Mr Horton.

"Yes, sir."

"They have come all the way from Kensal-Green. Give them some beer; here's the money."

He threw the Inspector half-a-crown, and the latter caught it, murmuring, "My eye and Betty Martin !"-a favourite oath of the period-"recently appointed, arn't he? New to the business ! "

Kensal-Green was a pretty little village, made all the prettier by the new canal which ran through it and through hundreds of acres of hay-fields round it. It was quiet, perfectly countrified or rural, more so than many a village now-a-days which lies near a railway, and celebrated as a health-resort. Very small people, who had made very small sums of money, came and lived there, cultivating small patches of ground and humble memories, and living in a state of perfect and Paradisaical innocence, but for the swearing of the bargees who navigated the canal. These fellows were more lively than ever they are now, doing, indeed, a brisker trade as carriers, and quite frightening some of the people out of their tenements; so that it resulted that all the better houses were built at some distance from the canal. Otherwise, the neighbourhood was bright and pretty enough. At a short distance lay the Edgware Road; and along that the coaches from the North used to run several times a-day into the Oxford Road, and thence to Holborn.

eye,

The yellow-bodied cab, with the police magistrate and the Inspector seated side by side under a huge black leather hood, and driven by a driver with a sleeve-waistcoat and a black who sat by their side in a separate box or compartment, soon got to the cross-roads on the Green; for the bay mare with the cock-tail in the shafts was a good one, and had been a racer. Upon the Green the cab awaited the hackney coach, which came up with smoking horses; for the yellow-bodied cab, with its tall wheels and light fare, had "cut along pretty sharply," as the Inspector said.

"Now, then, old slow coach!" said the driver with the black eye.

D'yer want me to break their wind?" said the coachman, angrily.

"You couldn't, if so be you tried; it's done a'ready," returned the other.

During this passage of arms, Snape and Company descended. The tailor, leading the way, and followed by the stipendiary magistrate and police, the tall boy, the women, and a few children, also by the cabman with the black eye, turned to the right hand of the Green, to a little side road, and in a few minutes gained a pretty little box of a villa, which, with all its shutters shut in the broad daylight, looked as if it had gone to sleep. A light ornamental railing ran in front of the house, and dwarf walls divided it from others, one only of which, and that uninhabited, stood beyond it. The little villa had a ground floor and a first floor, and altogether did not number more than six small rooms and a wash-house. Somehow, as the people approached it, they shuddered and felt dull, the house looked so deserted and so tightly closed.

"Yes," said Jasper Snape; "that's the place-look at it!" The magistrate, placing a policeman at the little fore-garden gate, and taking the Inspector and Snape with him, knocked with his silver-headed cane at both door and shutters. There

was no answer.

'Ay, you may knock," said one of the women to the other. "You won't get no answer; she 'll never open that door agin." Mr Horton turned round, and said to the policeman at the door-who was regarded in that rural district almost with awe, as a powerful and antagonistic novelty

"Send for a locksmith."

A young fellow with a rush basket on his shoulders hereon stepped forward. Carefully dusting the stone doorstep with his white apron, he knelt down, took his rush basket off his shoulders, shook the door, tried to look through the keyhole, and then selecting a fine picklock of much power, placed it in the lock. The door opened easily, and the little party entered. There was an eager movement from the crowd without; the women pressed closer together, the children even dared to push the policeman in their eagerness to get in at the gate.

Mr Jasper Snape's worst anticipations were too well founded. The very passage, which was small enough, exhibited to the excited senses of the searchers something indicative of the

coming revelation. The mat had been kicked up; the kitchen candle, which had burned itself out in its tin candlestick, had flared and guttered down with a brown-red grease that looked almost like blood. On the left-hand side was the "drawingroom" of the little villa. In it was a desk, broken open, and the drawer wrenched out, bending the thin brass pin which fastened it. Papers were scattered about; and an Indian shawl of some little value, thin and filmy, which had lain in the bottom of a work-box, was thrown on the sofa, the workbox upset on the top of it, and the pocket of the work-box was torn open.

"Whoever he was," said the plain-clothesman, "this cracksman was in a hurry."

:

In the next room, the door of which faced the other, the same hurry was observed. Some cold meat and an egg were put for some one to eat; a bottle, with the cork out, of brandy stood near it the brandy was of that dark, mahogany colour, then fashionable; but by its side there was something not then found in small houses, a bottle of claret. The cloth, laid carefully, very white and good, was pulled on one side towards the door, as if some person had suddenly risen. A napkin and a napkin ring, unused, but with some stains upon it, lay upon the floor. The stains were of blood. The little sideboard had been forced open; but the thief had forgotten to take two or three silver tea-spoons, the only plate there.

"He's a rum cracksman," said the detective, "and not a very old hand.”

Mr Brownjohn, who ventured that opinion, was an old hand himself, drafted from Bow Street into the New Police, and was celebrated in his way.

Neither Mr Horton nor the Inspector-both men of more reflection than Brownjohn, who owed his reputation to instinct, or to happy guesses-said anything. Either the owner had been very careless, which might have been the case, or the guilty person had, in an eager search, moved nearly every article.

Through the dining-room a door led into the neat little kitchen, which was merely sufficient to prepare food for an old, or a very young couple in their honeymoon; and, indeed, the

little Cockney village was much resorted to by humble young people who had just married.

After looking round the dining-room, the magistrate, closely followed by Jasper Snape, entered the kitchen. The latter no sooner had put his head in the little room, than he gave a cry, and rushed forward.

"There she is!-there! there! Poor Mrs Martin! Poor Madame !"

The old pigeon-fancier knelt down by the side of the corpse; and there, sure enough, the head lying in the cinders, was the body of the Widow Martin. Part of the cap and part of the hair were burnt. Curiously, the water of the kettle had been spilt in the struggle or attack, and had flowed over the body and extinguished the flames. It was probable that the murderer would have been well pleased had the body been burnt, and all evidence of the crime thus destroyed.

"Where has the poor woman been wounded?" said the magistrate.

"In the back, between the shoulders, twice," said the Inspector, turning back the shawl. "A small hole enough the weapon left, but 'tis enough."

"She is quite cold," said Snape, in a whisper, as if he dared not speak aloud.

"Been dead at least three days," said the Inspector. "What blood there is, is dry. She must have bled inwardly. One blow went through the heart. I should think she had not time to cry out 'Oh !'"

"Poor creature!" ejaculated Mr Horton, in deep pity and disgust. "Could not the villains have robbed the house without murdering her? Pass the word for a doctor. Stevenson, take an inventory of the matters here. Mr Snape, come with me into the next room; and, while we wait here, tell me who was this woman?"

Mr Snape followed the magistrate, who sat down in the deserted drawing-room. The Inspector passed the word for a doctor; and, in some mysterious way, all the people outside seemed to have been made acquainted with the facts inside. The constable of the village came up and took the place of the policeman at the gate; and that functionary in blue was sent

back in the yellow-bodied cab to Homer Street, New Road, for a more efficient aid; for the Inspector looked with a jealous, as well as a supercilious eye upon the plain-clothesman, Brownjohn.

"There's no time to lose," said he. "Brownjohn is flummoxed quite. We shall want Old Daylight here."

And so having determined, the cabman in the sleeve-jacket, and with a black eye, having seen his blue-coated fare in his swing cabriolet, was despatched to Homer Street at a fast trot.

"Why do you send for Old Daylight?" said the policeman, sulkily. "It's plain enough this ain't no professional cracksman. It's some fellow as has been suddenly took. He's got a good start, but I'll have him.”

"There's more in it than you think for, Brownjohn," said the Inspector, severely. "Tom Forster 's the only man for delicate work like this."

Tom Forster was the proper name of Old Daylight.

The plain-clothesman stood rebuked and sulky; and, in the little kitchen, such was the silence that they heard the clear voice of Mr Horton ask Snape the question-"Who was this woman?

CHAPTER II.

MR TOM FORSTER PUTS HIMSELF ON THE QUI VIVE.

WHAT Mr Jasper Snape, tailor and bird-fancier, could not tell the magistrate, Mr Horton contrived to gather from the neighbours, while the yellow-bodied cab went literally at a swinging trot for Old Daylight; and Inspector Stevenson was at once pleased and delighted with the clear, concise, and efficient way in which the magistrate went through his examinations. Indeed, it was not to be wondered at. Mr George Horton was a rising barrister of great promise, and many of his friends thought that he was unwise to accept the thousand a-year of the stipendiary magistrateship. But his reason will have to be explained. In the meantime, let us tell the reader who Mrs Martin was.