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I then opened the letter, and glancing hastily at the signature was filled with uneasiness to see who my correspondent was.

“It’s from that fellow Barker,” I said.

“Barker!” cried Parton. “What on earth has Barker been writing to you about?”

“He is in trouble,” I replied, as I read the letter.

“Financial, I presume, and wants a lift?” suggested Parton.

“Worse than that,” said I, “he is in prison in London.”

“Wha-a-at?” ejaculated Parton. “In prison in London? What for?”

“On suspicion of having murdered an innkeeper in the South of England on Tuesday, August 16th.”

“Well, I’m sorry to say that I believe he was guilty,” returned Parton, without reflecting that the 16th day of August was the day upon which he and I had first encountered Barker.

“That’s your prejudice, Jack,” said I. “If you’ll think a minute you’ll know he was innocent. He was here on August 16th–last Tuesday. It was then that you and I saw him for the first time limping along the road and bleeding from a wound in the shoulder.”

“Was Tuesday the 16th?” said Parton, counting the days backward on his fingers. “That’s a fact. It was–but it’s none of my affair anyhow. It is too blessed queer for me to mix myself up in it, and I say let him languish in jail. He deserved it for something, I am sure-“

“Well, I’m not so confoundedly heartless,” I returned, pounding the table with my fist, indignant that Parton should allow his prejudices to run away with his sense of justice. “I’m going to London to do as he asks.”

“What does he want you to do? Prove an alibi?”

“Precisely; and I’m going and you’re going, and I shall see if the landlord here won’t let me take one of his boys along to support our testimony–at my own expense if need be.”

“You’re right, old chap,” returned Parton, after a moment of internal struggle. “I suppose we really ought to help the fellow out of his scrape; but I’m decidedly averse to getting mixed up in an affair of any kind with a man like Carleton Barker, much less in an affair with murder in it. Is he specific about the murder?”

“No. He refers me to the London papers of the 17th and 18th for details. He hadn’t time to write more, because he comes up for examination on Tuesday morning, and as our presence is essential to his case he was necessarily hurried.”

“It’s deucedly hard luck for us,” said Parton, ruefully. “It means no Scotland this trip.”

“How about Barker’s luck?” I asked. “He isn’t fighting for a Scottish trip–he’s fighting for his life.”

And so it happened that on Monday morning, instead of starting for Edinburgh, we boarded the train for London at Car-lisle. We tried to get copies of the newspapers containing accounts of the crime that had been committed, but our efforts were unavailing, and it was not until we arrived in London and were visited by Barker’s attorneys that we obtained any detailed information whatsoever of the murder; and when we did get it we were more than ever regretful to be mixed up in it, for it was an unusually brutal murder. Strange to say, the evidence against Barker was extraordinarily convincing, considering that at the time of the commission of the crime he was hundreds of miles from the scene. There was testimony from railway guards, neighbors of the murdered innkeeper, and others, that it was Barker and no one else who committed the crime. His identification was complete, and the wound in his shoulder was shown almost beyond the possibility of doubt to have been inflicted by the murdered man in self-defence.

“Our only hope,” said the attorney, gravely, “is in proving an alibi. I do not know what to believe myself, the chain of evidence against my client is so complete; and yet he asserts his innocence, and has stated to me that you two gentlemen could assist in proving it. If you actually encountered Carleton Barker in the neighborhood of Keswick on the 16th of this month, the whole case against him falls to the ground. If not, I fear his outlook has the gallows at the small end of the perspective.”