"The Chains of Bondage."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10097, 20 September 1910, Page 2

"The Chains of Bondage."

CHAPTER LVlll.—Continued

"But they can prova nothing against me; it is impossible that they can prove anything!" he bad said to hinißelf a hundred timee. Vernharn said it again tc-night in the bar, with the sound of noisy voices and laughter going on about him, while ha sat with deep care written on hia face, preoccupied in thought. But fur all that would be reassuring assertion, he looked forward to the morrow with dread, and wished himself well out of the country. Once, shortly after Judith's arrest, he had made an effort to leave England. At Southampton, within an hour of the time when he meant to slip on board, a plainly dressed man, whom ho had noticed several times without any suspicion in his mind, had come up to him and said something in his ear; and Mr Vernharn had turned away from that outgoing liner, with that hope of flight nipped in the bud. He had known then that he was under constant police surveillance; that any attempt to leave the country woud be followed by hia arrest. He thought of that now, as be sat in the bar. Why was he being shadowed? The police could have no proof against him, Was it because they suspected that ha might fail to turn up, one of the witnesses, subpoenad to appear at the trial? That he would have to appear as a witness was certain, and he shrank in terror from the prospect of the witness box, His apprehensions and this constant shadowing had broken the man's nerve.

Vernham curaed himself for having appeared in the matter at all. Wnat a fool he had been to act on that impulse of anger and resentment, and go to the police to inform them of Judith's whereabouts—what a fool! He could have taken his revenge on her quite as easily, quite an surely, by sending an anonymous letter to the police. The result would have been the same, and he would not have been implicated. And what a fool, too, to have said what he did to the police, when that impulse had led him to denounce the woman—to have told them that, shortly before the murder, Hardressa, after a bitter quarrel with his wife, had said to him: "She has the devil's temper, Dick. Before to-day she has taken up a. knife v to me—gone for me like a cat; one of these days, in her temper/she'll let daylight into me!"

The. words were a sheer fabrication on Verriham's part; he had told the lie on an unconsidered impulse to make the case appear blacker against the woman he hated. What a fool he had been to open bis mouth! Now the prosecution were calling him as a witaess, and would take care he should appear. There was a good deal of laughter going on about him in the bar; it was a bar where he had taken to coming of late, because his identity was unknown there. He had been avoiding his old acquaintances. The laughter jarred upon his nervous gloomy mood. Some, joung ass of a dude at the bar was amusing the barmaid and two or three men about him with what he called "the latest thing out, don't you know!" It was a book for the collecting of thumb impressions of one's friends. You moistened your thumb on a special pad, then pressed it on a page m the book; the impression, with the countless tiny lines, came out clearly reproduced. It was curious how, though superficially alike, every thumb-print differed essentially from the others. "They do say that there arn't two thumb-prints exactly alike in tbe world" giggled the barmaid, as she contributed the first "thumb-print" to the album.

"That may be so, my dear. Anyway, there won't he many prettier thumbß in all my collection than yours!" said the dude, with that fatuous laugh that irritated Vernham, Bitting apart fiom the noisy group. "If you had some more thumbprints we could compare the lines on them," went on the barmaid. "I'm

BY EMILY B. EETHEEINGTONAuthor of—" Hia College Chum," " Worthington's Pledge," "A kepem&nt Foe," etc.

going to auk every gentleman in the bar to put his thumh-print in the book. May I?" " 'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears—l mean, thumbs!" quoted the wit of the • arty humorously. The proposal was agreed to with acclamation. One after another of the group at the bar imprinted hfs "thumb signature," as she called it. Then, with a giugle, the barmaid walked across to Vernharn. At first it was on his lips to tell her roughly that ho was in no mood for such tomfoolery. But he thought better of the impulse. He had no wish to make himself conspicuous by a refusal. With a sullen ill grace he complied with the request; his thumb print was duly added to the collection of the dude, who shortly afterwards departed. Vernharn little knew that he had practically signed his own death warrant.

Inside the Central Criminal Court the drama was opening. "Gentlemen of the jury, the prisoner at the bar stands indicted on the charge that she did wilfully murder one Gilbert Hardress. To that she has pleaded that she is not guilty. Now you are to try the issue, and to say whether she is guiltiy or not." And there in the dock, between two female warders, stood the strikingly beautiful woman, with wide, hupeless eyes, clouded with pain and horror, yet with a certain quality of courage suggested in the proud poise of the head, as the attorney for the prosecution opened his speech. The court was crowded. Seldom had a murder trial drawn larger numbers of well known people in every rank of,life. Sybil Ellstree-who of late had been playing bridge more recklessly than ever—was there. Her friends whispered that she was trying to find distraction from the disappointment. It was known that Jim Ralston's engagement to Miss Hood had been no light blow to Sybil. Lucky Jim Ralston, the gossips added, was to marry a charmingly pretty girl, and the real heiress to all the great Craven fortune. But perhaps it was something more than her disappointment in failing to win the only man she had ever cared for. heavy as that disappointment had hden, that broqght the weary, ! dissatisfied look to Sybil's face. In her jealous attempt to part Jim and Elsie—that poor, ineffectual scheme that had failed so lamentably, that had never had a chance of success —she had told an ugly lie to Jim and Jim knew that it had been a deliber ate, spiteful lie. The feeline of mortification, the sense of shame that Jim should know her capable of such a He that had been the death-blow to even further friendship on his part, added gallingly to her bitter sense of failure. She had tried, venomously enough, yet feebly enough to part them; and her weapons had gained her nothing—had only recoiled on her own head. And now Sybil Ellstree was suffering her punishment, not in remorse for .her intention, but in humiliated mortification.

In the court, too, by her side, was Wilfred. Scarcely once through the proceedings did he take his eyes off the woman lost to him, whom he would never cease to love, waiting In an agony of suspense. His friend Trevena had won what he had lost, and, if he bore Trevena no grudge, there remained hidden in his heart a deep, aching sorrow. Not far away Paul Ralston sat looking grim as ever, yet with his face indefinably changed from that of the Paul Kaleton of months ago. (To Be Continued.)