up with him so did at my side i can t quite understand the house seems to have been violently entered when joe was out supposed by somebody has been attacked and hurt we were running too fast to admit of more being said � we made no stop until we got into our kitchen it was of people the whole village was there or in the yard and there was a surgeon and there was joe and there were a group of women all on the floor in the midst of the kitchen the by drew back when they saw me and so i became aware of my sister � lying without sense or movement on the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on the back of the head dealt by some unknown hand when her ce was turned towards the i � destined never to be on the again while she was wife of joe chapter xvi with mj head fall of george i was at first disposed to believe that must have had some hand in the attack upon mj sister or at all events that as her near relation known to be under obligations to her i was a more legitimate object of suspicion than any one else but when in the clearer light of next morning i began to the matter and to hear it discussed around me on all sides i took another view of the case which was more reasonable joe had been at the three jolly smoking his pipe firom a quarter after eight o clock to a quarter before ten while he was there my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door and had exchanged good night with a farm going home the man could not be more particular as to the time at which he saw her he got into dense confusion when he tried to be than that it must have been before nine when joe went home at five minutes before ten he found her struck down on the floor and promptly called in assistance the fire had not then burnt unusually low nor was the snuff of the candle very long the candle however had been blown out nothing had been taken away from any part of the house neither beyond the blowing out of the candle � which stood on a table between the door and my and was her she stood tlie fire and was strode � was there an j cf the kitchen excepting as she had made in filling and bat there was one remarkable of on the she had been something and on the head and after the were dealt something heavy had been thrown down at her with considerable as she on her and on the beside her when joe picked her np was a s l inn which had been now this iron with a smith s declared it to hare been filed asunder some time the hue and cry going off to the and people coming thence to the iron joe s opinion was they did not undertake to say when it had left the prison ships to which it undoubtedly had once belonged but they claimed to know for certain that that particular had not been worn by either of two who had escaped last night further one of those two was already and had not freed himself of his iron knowing what i knew i set up an of my own here i believed the iron to be my s iron � the iron i had seen and heard him at on the � but my mind did not accuse him of having put it to latest use for i believed one of two other persons to have become possessed of it and to have turned it ta this cruel account either or the strange man who had shown me the file now as to he had gone to town exactly as he told us when we picked him up at the he had been seen about town all the evenings he had been expectations in divers companies in several public and be bad back witb and mr was nothing against bim save tbe quarrel and mj sister bad witb bim and witb everybody else about ber ten thousand times as to tbe strange man if be bad come back for his two bank notes could have been no dispute about them because my sister was fully prepared to restore them besides bad been no tbe bad come in so silently and suddenly that she bad been before she could look round it was horrible to think that i bad provided the weapon however but i could hardly think otherwise i suffered unspeakable trouble while i con and whether i should at last that spell of my childhood and tell joe all the story for months afterwards i every day settled the question finally in the negative and and it next morning the came after all to this � the secret was such an old one now had so grown into me and become a part of myself that i could not tear it away in addition to the dread that having led up to so much mischief it would be now more likely tha n ever to joe from me i b bad the further dread would not believe it but would it with the dogs and as a monstrous invention however i witb myself of course for was i not wavering between right and wrong when the thing is always done � and resolved to make a full disclosure if i should see any such new occasion as a new chance f helping in tbe of the the and the bow street men from � � � for this happened m the days of the red police � were the house for a week or two and 