ON the third appearance of my mistress and myself before the justice, I noticed some faces in the room which I had not seen there before. Greatly to my astonishment — for the previous examinations had been conducted as privately as possible — I remarked the presence of two of the servants from the Hall, and of three or four of the tenants on the Darrock estate, who lived nearest to the house. They all sat together on one side of the justice-room. Opposite to them and close at the side of a door, stood my old acquaintance, Mr. Dark, with his big snuff-box, his jolly face, and his winking eye. He nodded to me, when I looked at him, as jauntily as if we were meeting at a party of pleasure. The quadroon woman, who had been summoned to the examination, had a chair placed opposite to the witness-box, and in a line with the seat occupied by my poor mistress, whose looks, as I was grieved to see, were not altered for the better. The lawyer from London was with her, and I stood behind her chair.

We were all quietly disposed in the room in this way, when the justice, Mr. Robert Nicholson, came in with his brother. It might have been only fancy, but I thought I could see in both their faces that something remarkable had happened since we had met at the last examination.

The deposition of Josephine Durand was read over by the clerk, and she was asked if she had anything to add to it. She replied in the negative. The justice then appealed to my mistress’s relation, the lawyer, to know if he could produce any evidence relating to the charge against his clients.

“I have evidence,” answered the lawyer, getting briskly on his legs, “which I believe, sir, will justify me in asking for their discharge.”

“Where are your witnesses?” inquired the justice, looking hard at Josephine while he spoke.

“One of them is in waiting, your worship,” said Mr. Dark, opening the door near which he was standing.

He went out of the room, remained away about a minute, and returned with his witness at his heels.

My heart gave a bound as if it would jump out of my body. There, with his long hair cut short, and his bushy whiskers shaved off — there, in his own proper person, safe and sound as ever, was Mr. James Smith!

The quadroon’s iron nature resisted the shock of his unexpected presence on the scene with a steadiness that was nothing short of marvelous. Her thin lips closed together convulsively, and there was a slight movement in the muscles of her throat. But not a word, not a sign betrayed her. Even the yellow tinge of her complexion remained unchanged.

“It is not necessary, sir, that I should waste time and words in referring to the wicked and preposterous charge against my clients,” said the lawyer, addressing Mr. Robert Nicholson. “The one sufficient justification for discharging them immediately is before you at this moment in the person of that gentleman. There, sir, stands the murdered Mr. James Smith, of Darrock Hall, alive and well, to answer for himself.”

“That is not the man!” cried Josephine, her shrill voice just as high, clear, and steady as ever, “I denounce that man as an impostor. Of my own knowledge, I deny that he is Mr. James Smith.”

“No doubt you do,” said the lawyer; “but we will prove his identity for all that.”

The first witness called was Mr. Philip Nicholson. He could swear that he had seen Mr. James Smith, and spoken to him at least a dozen times. The person now before h im was Mr. James Smith, altered as to personal appearance by having his hair cut short and his whiskers shaved off, but still unmistakably the man he assumed to be.

“Conspiracy!” interrupted the prisoner, hissing the word out viciously between her teeth.

“If you are not silent,” said Mr. Robert Nicholson, “you will be removed from the room. It will sooner meet the ends of justice,” he went on, addressing the lawyer, “if you prove the question of identity by witnesses who have been in habits of daily communication with Mr. James Smith.”

Upon this, one of the servants from the Hall was placed in the box.

The alteration in his master’s appearance evidently puzzled the man. Besides the perplexing change already adverted to, there was also a change in Mr. James Smith’s expression and manner. Rascal as he was, I must do him the justice to say that he looked startled and ashamed when he first caught sight of his unfortunate wife. The servant, who was used to be eyed tyrannically by him, and ordered about roughly, seeing him now for the first time abashed and silent, stammered and hesitated on being asked to swear to his identity.

“I can hardly say for certain, sir,” said the man, addressing the justice in a bewildered manner. “He is like my master, and yet he isn’t. If he wore whiskers and had his hair long, and if he was, saying your presence, sir, a little more rough and ready in his way, I could swear to him anywhere with a safe conscience.”

Fortunately for us, at this moment Mr. James Smith’s feeling of uneasiness at the situation in which he was placed changed to a feeling of irritation at being coolly surveyed and then stupidly doubted in the matter of his identity by one of his own servants.

“Can’t you say in plain words, you idiot, whether you know me or whether you don’t?” he called out, angrily.

“That’s his voice!” cried the servant, starting in the box. “Whiskers or no whiskers, that’s him!”

“If there’s any difficulty, your worship, about the gentleman’s hair,” said Mr. Dark, coming forward with a grin, “here’s a small parcel which, I may make so bold as to say, will remove it.” Saying that, he opened the parcel, took some locks of hair out of it, and held them up close to Mr. James Smith’s head. “A pretty good match, your worship,” continued Mr. Dark. “I have no doubt the gentleman’s head feels cooler now it’s off. We can’t put the whiskers on, I’m afraid, but they match the hair; and they are in the paper (if one may say such a thing of whiskers) to speak for themselves.”

“Lies! lies! lies!” screamed Josephine, losing her wicked self-control at this stage of the proceedings.

The justice made a sign to two of the constables present as she burst out with those exclamations, and the men removed her to an adjoining room.

The second servant from the Hall was then put in the box, and was followed by one of the tenants. After what they had heard and seen, neither of these men had any hesitation in swearing positively to their master’s identity.

“It is quite unnecessary,” said the justice, as soon as the box was empty again, “to examine any more witnesses as to the question of identity. All the legal formalities are accomplished, and the charge against the prisoners falls to the ground. I have great pleasure in ordering the immediate discharge of both the accused persons, and in declaring from this place that they leave the court without the slightest stain on their characters.”

He bowed low to my mistress as he said that, paused a moment, and then looked inquiringly at Mr. James Smith.

“I have hitherto abstained from making any remark unconnected with the immediate matter in hand,” he went on. “But, now that my duty is done, I cannot leave this chair without expressing my strong sense of disapprobation of the conduct of Mr. James Smith — conduct which, whatever may be the motives that occasioned it, has given a false color of probability to a most horrible charge against a lady of unspotted reputation, and against a person in a lower rank of life whose good character ought not to have been imperiled even for a moment. Mr. Smith may or may not choose to explain his mysterious disappearance from Darrock Hall, and the equally unaccountable change which he has chosen to make in his personal appearance. There is no legal charge against him; but, speaking morally, I should be unworthy of the place I hold if I hesitated to declare my present conviction that his conduct has been deceitful, inconsiderate, and unfeeling in the highest degree.”

To this sharp reprimand Mr. James Smith (evidently tutored beforehand as to what he was to say) replied that, in attending before the justice, he wished to perform a plain duty and to keep himself strictly within the letter of the law. He apprehended that the only legal obligation laid on him was to attend in that court to declare himself, and to enable competent witnesses to prove his identity. This duty accomplished, he had merely to add that he preferred submitting to a reprimand from the bench to entering into explanations which would involve the disclosure of domestic circumstances of a very unhappy nature. After that brief reply he had nothing further to say, and he would respectfully request the justice’s permission to withdraw.

The permission was accorded. As he crossed the room he stopped near his wife, and said, confusedly, in a very low tone:

“I have done you many injuries, but I never intended this. I am sorry for it. Have you anything to say to me before I go?”

My mistress shuddered and hid her face. He waited a moment, and, finding that she did not answer him, bowed his head politely and went out. I did not know it then, but I had seen him for the last time.

After he had gone, the lawyer, addressing Mr. Robert Nicholson, said that he had an application to make in reference to the woman Josephine Durand.

At the mention of that name my mistress hurriedly whispered a few words into her relation’s ear. He looked toward Mr. Philip Nicholson, who immediately advanced, offered his arm to my mistress, and led her out. I was about to follow, when Mr. Dark stopped me, and begged that I would wait a few minutes longer, in order to give myself the pleasure of seeing “the end of the case.”

In the meantime, the justice had pronounced the necessary order to have the quadroon brought back. She came in, as bold and confident as ever. Mr. Robert Nicholson looked away from her in disgust and said to the lawyer:

“Your application is to have her committed for perjury, of course?”

“For perjury?” said Josephine, with her wicked smile. “Very good. I shall explain some little matters that I have not explained before. You think I am quite at your mercy now? Bah! I shall make myself a thorn in your sides yet.”

“She has got scent of the second marriage,” whispered Mr. Dark to me.

There could be no doubt of it. She had evidently been listening at the door on the night when my master came back longer than I had supposed. She must have heard those words about “the new wife”— she might even have seen the effect of them on Mr. James Smith.

“We do not at present propose to charge Josephine Durand with perjury,” said the lawyer, “but with another offense, for which it is important to try her immediately, in order to effect the restoration of property that has been stolen. I charge her with stealing from her mistress, while in her service at Darrock Hall, a pair of bracelets, three rings, and a dozen and a half of lace pocket-handkerchiefs. The articles in question were taken this morning from between the mattresses of her bed; and a letter was found in the same place which clearly proves that she had represented the property as belonging to herself, and that she had tried to dispose of it to a purchaser in London.” While he was speaking, Mr. Dark produced the jewelry, the handkerchiefs and the letter, and laid them before the justice.

Even Josephine’s extraordinary powers of self-control now gave way at last. At the first words of the unexpected charge against her she struck her hands together violently, gnashed her sharp white teeth, and burst out with a torrent of fierce-sounding words in some foreign language, the meaning of which I did not understand then and cannot explain now.

“I think that’s checkmate for marmzelle,” whispered Mr. Dark, with his invariable wink. “Suppose you go back to the Hall, now, William, and draw a jug of that very remarkable old ale of yours? I’ll be after you in five minutes, as soon as the charge is made out.”

I could hardly realize it when I found myself walking back to Darrock a free man again.

In a quarter of an hour’s time Mr. Dark joined me, and drank to my health, happiness and prosperity in three separate tumblers. After performing this ceremony, he wagged his head and chuckled with an appearance of such excessive enjoyment that I could not avoid remarking on his high spirits.

“It’s the case, William — it’s the beautiful neatness of the case that quite intoxicates me. Oh, Lord, what a happiness it is to be concerned in such a job as this!” cries Mr. Dark, slapping his stumpy hands on his fat knees in a sort of ecstasy.

I had a very different opinion of the case for my own part, but I did not venture on expressing it. I was too anxious to know how Mr. James Smith had been discovered and produced at the examination to enter into any arguments. Mr. Dark guessed what was passing in my mind, and, telling me to sit down and make myself comfortable, volunteered of his own accord to inform me of all that I wanted to know.

“When I got my instructions and my statement of particulars,” he began, “I was not at all surprised to hear that Mr. James Smith had come back. (I prophesied that, if you remember, William, the last time we met?) But I was a good deal astonished, nevertheless, at the turn things had taken, and I can’t say I felt very hopeful about finding our man. However, I followed my master’s directions, and put the advertisement in the papers. It addressed Mr. James Smith by name, but it was very carefully worded as to what was wanted of him. Two days after it appeared, a letter came to our office in a woman’s handwriting. It was my business to open the letters, and I opened that. The writer was short and mysterious. She requested that somebody would call from our office at a certain address, between the hours of two and four that afternoon, in reference to the advertisement which we had inserted in the newspapers. Of course, I was the somebody who went. I kept myself from building up hopes by the way, knowing what a lot of Mr. James Smiths there were in London. On getting to the house, I was shown into the drawing-room, and there, dressed in a wrapper and lying on a sofa, was an uncommonly pretty woman, who looked as if she was just recovering from an illness. She had a newspaper by her side, and came to the point at once: ‘My husband’s name is James Smith,’ she says, ‘and I have my reasons for wanting to know if he is the person you are in search of.’ I described our man as Mr. James Smith, of Darrock Hall, Cumberland. ‘I know no such person,’ says she —”

“What! was it not the second wife, after all?” I broke out.

“Wait a bit,” says Mr. Dark. “I mentioned the name of the yacht next, and she started up on the sofa as if she had been shot. ‘I think you were married in Scotland, ma&rs............