reprimands. He was told that his silence might mean death.

"Very well," he said; "I will submit to it; but I am innocent."

With that splendid ability which has made his fame, Maitre Robert
took advantage of the incident, and tried to show that it brought
out in noble relief his client's character; for only heroic natures
could remain silent for moral reasons in face of such a danger.
The eminent advocate however, only succeeded in assuring those who
were already assured of Darzac's innocence. At the adjournment
Rouletabille had not yet arrived. Every time a door opened, all
eyes there turned towards it and back to the manager of the "Epoque,"
who sat impassive in his place. When he once was feeling in his
pocket a loud murmur of expectation followed. The letter!

It is not, however, my intention to report in detail the course of
the trial. My readers are sufficiently acquainted with the
mysteries surrounding the Glandier case to enable me to go on to
the really dramatic denouement of this ever-memorable day.

When the trial was resumed, Maitre Henri Robert questioned Daddy
Mathieu as to his complicity in the death of the keeper. His wife
was also brought in and was confronted by her husband. She burst
into tears and confessed that she had been the keeper's mistress,
and that her husband had suspected it. She again, however,
affirmed that he had had nothing to do with the murder of her lover.
Maitre Henri Robert thereupon asked the court to hear Frederic
Larsan on this point.

"In a short conversation which I have had with Frederic Larsan,