You are, extraordinary as it may seem, quite wrong.
My testimony would be of nothing but what I myself saw and heard."
"What do you mean?" Henshaw had for a moment seemed to be calculating the
probability of this monstrous suggestion being a fact, and had dismissed
it with the contempt which showed itself in his question.
"I mean," Gifford replied with quiet assurance, "that I happened to be a
witness of the interview in the tower-room between your brother and Miss
Morriston, that I was there when he received his death-wound, and that it
was I whom the girl Haynes saw descending by a rope from the top window."
Henshaw had started to his feet, his face working with an almost
passionate astonishment. "You--you tell me all that," he cried, "and
expect me to believe it?"
"I have told you and shall tell you nothing," was the cool reply, "that I
am not prepared to state on oath in the witness-box."
For a while Henshaw seemed without the power to reply, dumbfounded, as
his active brain tried to realize the probabilities of the declaration.
"It seems to me," he said at length in a voice of which he was scarcely
master, "that, whether your statement is true or otherwise, you are
placing yourself in an uncommonly dangerous position, Mr.
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