There was no guilty knowledge there.
'He never had any such thing that I know of,' she answered stoutly; 'and nothing could be hid from me in these drawers, Sir; for I had the key, except when it lay in the lock, and it must ha' been his horsewhip; it has some rings like of leather round it, and he used to lay it on these drawers.' Cluffe was, perhaps, a little bit stupid, and Lowe knew it; but it was the weakness of that good magistrate to discover in a witness for the crown many mental and moral attributes which he would have failed to recognise in him had he appeared for the prisoner.
'And where's that whip, now ?' demanded Lowe.
'By the hall-door, with his riding-coat, Sir,' answered the bewildered housekeeper.
'Go on, if you please, Ma'am, and let me see it.' So to the hall they went, and there, lying across the pegs from which Mr.Dangerfield's surtout and riding-coat depended, there certainly was a whip with the butt fashioned very much in the shape described by Captain Cluffe; but alas, no weapon--a mere toy--leather and cat-gut.
Lowe took it in his hand, and weighing it with a look of disgust and disappointment, asked rather impatiently-- 'Where's Captain Cluffe ?' The captain had gone away.
'Very well, I see,' said Lowe, replacing the whip; 'that will do.

The hound!' Mr.Lowe now re-entered the little parlour, where the incongruous crowd, lighted up with Mr.Dangerfield's wax lights, and several kitchen candles flaring in greasy brass sticks, were assisting at the treatment of the master of the castle and the wounded constables.
'Well, Sir,' said Mr.Dangerfield, standing erect, with his coat sleeve slit, and his arm braced up in splints, stiff and helpless in a sling, and a blot of blood in his shirt sleeve, contrasting with the white intense smirk of menace upon his face; 'if you have quite done with my linen and my housekeeper, Sir, I'm ready to accompany you under protest, as I've already said, wherever you design to convey my mangled person.

I charge you, Sir, with the safety of my papers and my other property which you constrain me to abandon in this house; and I think you'll rue this night's work to the latest hour of your existence.' 'I've done, and will do my duty, Sir,' replied Lowe, with dry decision.
'You've committed a d----d outrage; duty?
ha, ha, ha!' 'The coach is at the door, hey ?' asked Lowe 'I say, Sir,' continued Dangerfield, with a wolfish glare, and speaking in something like a suppressed shriek, 'you _shall_ hear my warning and my protest, although it should occupy the unreasonable period of two whole minutes of your precious time.

You half murder, and then arrest me for the offence of another man, and under the name of a man who has been dead and buried full twenty years.

I can prove it; the eminent London house of Elrington Brothers can prove it; the handwriting of the late Sir Philip Drayton, Baronet, of Drayton Hall, and of two other respectable witnesses to a formal document, can prove it; dead and rotten--_dust_, Sir.