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Johnny Ludlow, Second Series

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Title: Johnny Ludlow, Second Series

Author: Mrs. Henry Wood


        
Release date: October 3, 2012 [eBook #40928]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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Transcriber's note:

      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

      Text enclosed by plus signs is in Old English font
      (+Old English+).

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      A list of corrections is at the end of the book.





JOHNNY LUDLOW.

by

MRS. HENRY WOOD,

Author of "East Lynne," "The Channings," etc., etc.

SECOND SERIES







[Illustration]

+Thirty-third Thousand.+

London:
Richard Bentley and Son,
+Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.+
1896.
(All rights reserved.)

London:
Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Limited,
Stamford Street and Charing Cross.




CONTENTS.


                                    PAGE
      I. LOST IN THE POST              1

     II. A LIFE OF TROUBLE            19

    III. HESTER REED'S PILLS          36

     IV. ABEL CREW                    56

      V. ROBERT ASHTON'S WEDDING-DAY  75

     VI. HARDLY WORTH TELLING         92

    VII. CHARLES VAN RHEYN           109

   VIII. MRS. TODHETLEY'S EARRINGS   133

     IX. A TALE OF SIN               153

      X. A DAY OF PLEASURE           231

     XI. THE FINAL ENDING TO IT      250

    XII. MARGARET RYMER              272

   XIII. THE OTHER EARRING           289

    XIV. ANNE                        310

     XV. THE KEY OF THE CHURCH       367

    XVI. THE SYLLABUB FEAST          387

   XVII. SEEN IN THE MOONLIGHT       408

  XVIII. ROSE LODGE                  427

    XIX. LEE, THE LETTER MAN         446




JOHNNY LUDLOW.




I.

LOST IN THE POST.


Many a true tale has been told of the disappearance of money in passing
through the post. Sometimes the loss is never cleared up, but remains
a mystery to the end. One of these losses happened to us, and the
circumstances were so curious that they would have puzzled a bench of
judges. It was a regular mystery, and could not be accounted for in any
way.

                 *       *       *       *       *

If you chanced to read the first series of these papers, it may scarcely
be necessary to recall certain points to your recollection--that Mr.
Todhetley, commonly called the Squire, had two estates. The chief one,
Dyke Manor, lay on the borders of Worcestershire and Warwickshire,
partly in both counties; the other, Crabb Cot, was a smaller place
altogether, and much nearer Worcester. Sometimes we stayed at one
place, sometimes at the other. By an arrangement with Mr. Brandon, my
guardian and the trustee to my property, I, Johnny Ludlow, lived with
the Todhetleys. Mrs. Todhetley, the Squire's present wife, was my
stepmother, my father having married her after my own mother's death.
After my father's death--which took place speedily--she became the
second wife of Squire Todhetley, and the stepmother of his only son and
heir, Joseph. Two children were subsequently born to them, Hugh and
Lena, to whom Joseph was of course half-brother. Joseph, unlike myself,
had been old enough to resent the advent of a stepmother when she came.
Indulged and haughty, he did not like the gentle control she brought;
though she was good as gold, as loving to him as he would let her be,
and kind to everybody. I don't say but that she was tall and thin as a
lamp-post, with a mild face, given to having aches in it, scanty light
hair, and kindly blue eyes; so she had not much to boast of in the way
of appearance. Joe and I grew up together like brothers. He was several
years the elder, and domineered over me absolutely. At school he was
always called "Tod;" and I fell into the same habit. Perhaps that is
sufficient explanation.

"And if you don't come back to-night, you had better send me a
five-pound note in a letter," said Mrs. Todhetley.

"All right," replied the Squire.

This was said on the platform of Timberdale Station. We were staying at
Crabb Cot, and were taking the train at Timberdale instead of that at
South Crabb. The Squire was going to Worcester, and was taking Tod and
myself with him. It was a fine morning in April, and Mrs. Todhetley
and little Hugh had come with us through the Ravine for the sake of
the walk. Our returning at night, or not, was left an open question,
contingent upon the Squire's business at Worcester being over.

"Bring me a whip, and a new bird-cage for my thrush, and a pot of
marmalade, papa," called out Hugh.

"What else would you like, sir?" retorted the Squire.

"You bring 'em, Joe."

"I dare say!" said Tod.

The train puffed off, drowning Hugh's further commands. We saw him throw
his cap at the train, and Mrs. Todhetley holding him back from running
after it.

"That young gentleman wants to be sent to school," remarked the Squire.
"I'm afraid you two boys make him worse than he would be."

We reached Worcester about twelve, and went to the Star and Garter. The
Squire had no end of matters on hand that day: but the two chief things
that had brought him to Worcester were--to draw some money from the
bank, and to negotiate with Mr. Prothero, a corn-dealer, for the sale of
a load of wheat. Mr. Prothero was a close man to deal with: he wanted
the wheat at one price, the Squire said it should only go at another: if
he held out, the Squire meant to hold out, even though it involved
staying the night in Worcester.

It was Wednesday; market-day. Not so large a market as the Saturday's,
but the town looked pretty full. The first thing the Squire did was to
go to the Old Bank. At the door he turned round and said there was no
need for three of us to crowd into the place. However, we were then
inside, and so went on with him.

He had something particular to say to Mr. Isaac, and asked for him. They
were talking together in private for a minute or two, and then the
Squire took out his cheque for fifty pounds, and laid it on the counter.

"How will you take it?" asked Mr. Isaac.

"In five-pound notes."

Mr. Isaac brought the money himself. The Squire put it in his
pocket-book, and we said good-morning, and departed. There were shops to
call at and people to see: and of course the market to walk through. You
wouldn't get the Squire to keep himself out of the market-house, when
in Worcester on market-day: he'd go about asking the price of butter and
fowls like any old woman. A little after four o'clock we got back to the
Star; and found Mr. Prothero had not made his appearance.

"Just like him!" cried the Squire. "His appointment was for four o'clock
sharp. He means to hold out against my price; that's what he thinks to
do. Let him! he won't get the wheat at less."

"I'd see him a jolly long way before he should have it at all," said
haughty Tod. "Do you hear, sir?"

"Hold your tongue, Joe," was the Squire's answer.

"Anyway, sir, Prothero gives you more trouble than all the rest of the
buyers put together. He's a stingy, close-fisted fellow."

"But his money's safe and sure. Prothero is a respectable man, Joe; his
word's as good as his bond."

Half-past four, and no Prothero. The Squire began to fume a little: if
he hated one thing more than another it was to be kept waiting.

"Look here, boys, I'll send that note to your mother," he said, taking
out his pocket-book. "There's not much chance of our going home to-night
at this rate. Ring, one of you, for some paper and envelopes."

Separating one of the notes from the roll Mr. Isaac had handed to him,
he gave it to me to put up. I asked him if I should take down the
number.

"I don't think it matters, Johnny."

But I took it down, perhaps through some unconscious instinct--for I
don't suppose I am more cautious than other people. In my pocket was a
letter from Anna Whitney: and I pencilled on it the number of the note.

"Write inside the envelope 'Not home till to-morrow,'" growled the
Squire, forgetting that it could not be there till the morning. But he
was in an ill-humour.

I wrote it at his bidding, enclosed the bank-note, and addressed the
letter to Mrs. Todhetley at Crabb Cot. Tod and I went out to post it,
and began laying plans as to how we should spend the evening at
Worcester.

The post-office is not far from the Star, as everybody knows: and
though we met a fellow who used to go to school with us, a doctor's son,
and stayed talking with him, not ten minutes elapsed before we were
back again. And behold in that short time there was a change in the
programme. Old Prothero had been in, the bargain about the wheat was
concluded, and the Squire intended to start for home as soon as dinner
was over. Tod resented the change.

"Johnny and I were going to that advertised _séance_--or whatever they
call the thing--on electro-biology, sir. It will be first-rate fun, they
say."

"Very sorry for you and Johnny. You'll have to go home instead. Prothero
has bought the wheat: and that's all I should have had to stay here
for."

"At his own price!" cried Tod, rather mockingly.

"No, Mr. Joe; at mine."

"Well, it's an awful sell for us," grumbled Tod. "It's not so often we
get a night at Worcester, that we should be done out of this chance."

"The fact is, I don't feel well," said the Squire, "and should most
likely have gone home, whether Prothero had come in or not. I'm afraid I
have caught cold, Joe."

There was not any more to be said. The Squire's colds were no joke: once
he caught one, he would be downright ill; laid up for days. We went back
by rail to Timberdale, and took a fly home.

The next morning the Squire did not get up. Sure enough he had a cold,
and was feverish. At breakfast Mrs. Todhetley said one of us should go
over to South Crabb and ask Mr. Cole to call and see him.

"Why, the pater hates doctors!" exclaimed Tod.

"I know he does," she answered. "But I feel sure that if he would only
take remedies for his colds in time, they would not be so bad as they
usually are, Joseph. Who's that?" she added--for she was seated where
she could not see out, and had heard the gate click.

It was the postman: so I opened the glass doors.

"Only one, sir," said he, handing me the letter we had posted at
Worcester the previous afternoon.

Mrs. Todhetley laughed as she opened it, saying it would have come
sooner had we brought it with us. Looking to see that the bank-note was
safe, she left it in the envelope on the breakfast-table.

"You may as well get it changed for me at Salmon's," she said, handing
it to Tod as we were going out, "and then I need not disturb your
father. But you must make haste back, for you know I want the money."

She had no money in the house except a few shillings: and this was why
the note was to be posted to her if we stayed at Worcester. You are
often run short of money in rural country places: it's quite different
from town, where the banks are at hand.

We went through North Crabb, and met the doctor coming out at his door.
Tod told him the Squire wanted some physicking.

"Caught a cold, has he?" cried Cole. "If he will only be reasonable and
keep himself warm in bed, we'll soon have that out of him."

Cole lived close upon South Crabb--I think I've said so before. A few
yards beyond his house the shops began. Salmon's was the fifth from the
corner: a double shop, grocer's and draper's. The savings' bank was at
Salmon's, and the post-office: he was the busiest tradesman in South
Crabb, rather conceited over it, but very intelligent. His brother was
in business at Timberdale. This is what occurred.

"Will you be good enough to change this five-pound note for me, Mr.
Salmon?" said Tod, laying the note down on the grocer's counter, on the
left of the door, behind which Salmon stood, his grey hair carefully
brushed and a white apron on.

Salmon took the note up for a moment, and then unlocked the inner drawer
of his till, where he kept his gold. He was counting out the five
sovereigns when he paused; put them down, and picked up the note again
quickly. I had seen his eyes fall on it.

"Where did you get this note from, sir?" asked he of Tod.

"From the Old Bank at Worcester."

"Well, it's one of them notes that was lost in the robbery at
Tewkesbury, unless I'm much mistaken," cried Salmon, beginning to
turn over the leaves of a small account-book that he fetched from the
post-office desk. "Ay, I thought I was right," he adds, running his
finger across some figures on one of the pages. "I had the numbers
correct enough in my head."

"You must be out of your mind, Salmon," retorted Tod, in his defiant
way. "That note was paid to my father yesterday at Worcester Old Bank."

"I don't think it was, sir."

"You don't think it was! Why, I was present. I saw Mr. Isaac count the
notes out himself. Ten; and that was one of them."

"Mr. Isaac never counted out this note," persisted Salmon.

He smoothed it out on the counter as he spoke. I had not noticed it
before: but it struck me now as I looked at it that it was _not_ the
note I had put into the envelope at Worcester. That was a new, crisp
note; this was not crisp, and it looked a little soiled. Tod turned
passionate over it: he was just like the Squire in some things.

"I don't understand your behaviour, Salmon. I can swear that this note
was one given with the other nine at the bank yesterday, and given by
Mr. Isaac."

Salmon shook his head. As much as to say he knew to the contrary.

"You'd better accuse Mr. Isaac of dealing in stolen notes--or me," cried
hot Tod.

"You'd neither of you be likely to deal in them, Mr. Todhetley. There's
a mistake somewhere. That's what it is. Mr. Isaac would be too glad to
get this note into his possession to pay it away again. No people are
more severe against money-robberies than bankers."

Salmon talked, and Tod talked; but they could not agree. The apprentice
behind the counter on the drapery side listened with admiration,
evidently not knowing which side to take. I spoke then, saying that the
note did not appear to be the same as the one I had enclosed in the
letter; and Tod looked as though he could have knocked me down for
saying it. I had changed my clothes and had not Anna Whitney's letter
with me.

"Tod, it is of no use your taking it up in this way. If the thing is so,
it _is_. And it can soon be proved. I say I don't think it is the same
note, or the same numbers."

"If I had taken down the numbers of a bank-note, I could remember what
they were; so would any one but a muff, Johnny," said he, sarcastically.

"I don't remember what they were. But I do seem to remember that they
were not these."

Tod flung out of the shop in a passion: to him it seemed impossible
that anything could be wrong with a note had direct from the bank. As
to its not being the same note, he scouted it utterly. Had it dropped
through the envelope and changed itself _en route_ from Worcester? he
sarcastically demanded--coming in again to ask it.

Salmon was quietly going over the circumstances of the Tewkesbury
robbery to me. About three weeks before, a butcher's shop was robbed in
Tewkesbury--the till carried off in open day. It had gold and silver in
it and two five-pound notes. The numbers of the notes happened to be
known, and notice of them was circulated, to put people on their guard
against taking them.

"Look here, Mr. Ludlow," said Salmon, showing me the numbers of the
stolen notes written down in his book, and comparing the one with the
bank-note we had taken to him. "It's the same, you see. Reason's reason,
sir."

"But I don't see how it's practicable," cried Tod, coming round the
least bit in the world, as he condescended to look himself at the
numbers.

"Well, sir, neither do I--the facts being as you state them,"
acknowledged Salmon. "But here's the proof to stagger us, you observe.
It's in black and white."

"There must be two notes with the same numbers," said Tod.

Salmon smiled: great in his assumption of superior knowledge.

"There never was yet, Mr. Todhetley."

"Who numbers the notes, I wonder? I suppose mistakes are not impossible
to those who do it, any more than to other people."

"No fear of that, sir, with their system. The note has been changed in
the post."

"Nonsense!" retorted Tod.

They'd have cavilled until night, with no result, one holding
out against the other. Tod brought away the note and the five
sovereigns--which Salmon offered. We could send over another note at
leisure, he said. I examined the envelope after we had hastened home:
it was the same we had posted at Worcester, and did not appear to have
been tampered with.

Getting Anna Whitney's letter out of my best clothes' pocket, I brought
it to Tod. The numbers were quite different from the note's. He stared
like one bewildered: his eyes passing from those on the letter to those
on the note.

"Johnny, this beats bull-baiting."

So it did--for mystification.

"Are you sure you copied the figures correctly, old fellow?"

"Now, Tod! Of course I did."

"Let us go up to the pater."

The pater was getting up, in defiance of old Cole and Mrs. Todhetley,
and was dressed, up to his coat. He had a fire in his room and his white
night-cap on. I told him about the note. Tod was outside, telling Mrs.
Todhetley. He did not receive the news kindly.

"The note I gave you to put into the envelope was one of those stolen
from the butcher at Tewkesbury! How dare you bring your rubbishing
stories to me, Mr. Johnny!"

I tried to explain how it was--that it was not the same note; as the
numbers proved. He would hear nothing at first, only went on at me,
stamping his slippers and nodding his head, the big white tassel of the
night-cap bobbing up and down. If Salmon dared to say he had sent him a
stolen note to change, he'd teach Salmon what slander meant the next
time the magistrates sat.

Tod came in then with Mrs. Todhetley. The Squire had talked himself
quiet, and I got a hearing: showing him the numbers I had taken down
outside Anna's letter and the numbers on the stolen bank-note. It
brought him to reason.

"Why, bless my heart! How can they have been changed, Johnny?"

Taking the packet of notes out of his pocket-book, he went over their
numbers. They were all consecutive, the nine of them; and so was the
tenth, the one I had taken down. He pushed his night-cap back and stared
at us.

"Did you two get larking yesterday and drop the letter on your way to
the post?"

"We took it straight to the post, sir, and put it safely in."

"I don't know that I'd answer for that," stormed the Squire. "Once
dropped in the street, there's no knowing who might pick it up, or what
tricks might be played with it. Hold your tongues, you two. How else
do you suppose it could have been done? We don't live in the days of
miracles."

Off went his night-cap, on went his coat. Ringing the bell, he ordered
the phaeton to be got ready on the instant, to take him to the station:
he was going to Worcester. Mrs. Todhetley quite implored him not to
go; as good as went down on her knees: he would increase his cold,
and perhaps be laid up. But he wouldn't listen. "Hang the cold!" he
said: "he had no cold; it was gone. People shouldn't have it to say
that tricks could be played on him with impunity, and stolen notes
substituted for honest ones."

"What a way he puts himself into!" laughed Tod, when he had ordered us
off to make ready.

"I know somebody else who does just the same."

"You'll get it presently, Johnny."

Away we went to the station, Bob and Blister spanking along and Tod
driving; the Squire, wrapped in about a dozen rugs and comforters,
sitting beside him. The groom, Dwarf Giles, was behind with me: he would
have to take the carriage back again. A train came up pretty soon, and
we reached Worcester.

Of all commotions, the Squire made the worst. When he got to the bank,
Mr. Isaac was out: would not be in till three o'clock: and that put the
finishing stroke to the pater's impatience. Next he went to the Star,
and told of the matter there, gathering half the house about him. The
post-office was taken next. They seemed to know nothing whatever about
the letter--and I don't think they did--had not particularly noticed it
in sorting: could not have seemed to see less had they been in a fog
at sea: except one thing, and that they'd swear to--that every letter
posted at the office the previous day, and all other days, had been
duly forwarded, untampered with, to its destination.

The first dawn of reason that fell over us was in the interview with Mr.
Isaac. It was pleasant to be with any one so cheerfully calm. Taking the
roll of five-pound notes in his hand, he pronounced them to be the same
he had given us on the previous day; and the number I had dotted down to
have been the one belonging to the tenth note.

"And is this one of those two stolen ones that were advertised?"
demanded the Squire, putting it into Mr. Isaac's hands.

Mr. Isaac spoke with a clerk for a minute--perhaps referring to the
numbers as Salmon had done--and came back saying that it was the note.
So there we were: the matter laid, so far, to rest. Nothing could be
more unsatisfactory. The Squire sat quite still, as if he had been
struck dumb.

"I'm sure I shall never see daylight out of this," cried the Squire, in
a sort of hopeless, mazy tone. "It's worse than conjuring."

Mr. Isaac was called away. The Squire fastened upon one of the old
clerks, and went over the matter with him. He could not readily
understand it.

"The note must have been changed, Mr. Todhetley," said he.

"Changed in the post?"

"Changed somewhere."

"But who did it?"

"That's the question."

The Squire could not tear himself away. Once out of the bank he would be
nonplussed. He began casting a doubt on the Worcester post-office; the
clerk retorted that there was a post-office at our end, Timberdale: and
at that the Squire fired up. Each would have held out for the good faith
of his respective post-office to the death. It put Tod and me in mind
of the fable of the crows, each old mother saying that her own crow
was the whitest. After glaring at one another for a bit through their
spectacles, they shook hands and parted.

We arrived home to a late dinner at Crabb Cot, just as wise as we had
left it in the morning. The Squire had an awful cold, though he wouldn't
admit it. At nine o'clock he virtually gave in, went up to bed, and said
Molly was to make him a basin of hot gruel, and we might put a drop of
brandy in it.

The mode of conveying the letters from Worcester was this. The
Timberdale bag, made up at the Worcester office, was brought out at
night by the late train, and dropped at the Timberdale Station. The
postmaster of Timberdale would be at the station to receive it, and
carry it home.

His name was Rymer. A man of acknowledged respectability in the place,
and of good connections, the son of a clergyman. He had been brought up
for a surgeon, but somehow never had the chance to pass; and, years and
years ago, opened a chemist and druggist's shop at Timberdale. Then he
added other things: stationery, Christmas cards, valentines, boys'
marbles, purses, and such like, which his wife attended to. In time he
had the post-office. As to suspecting Rymer of doing anything wrong with
the note, it was not to be thought of. He had two children: a son, who
never seemed to do any good for himself, and if placed away from home
would return to it again: and a daughter, a nice little girl of sixteen,
who was as useful amidst the drugs and the post-office work as her
father.

Timberdale had two letter-carriers. One for the place itself, the other
for the country round. This last had a regular journey of it, for the
farm-houses were scattered. There had always been talk that our two
houses--the Squire's and old Coney's--ought not to be put in the
Timberdale district of delivery, and why it was originally done nobody
could make out; seeing that we were ever so far off Timberdale, and in
Crabb parish. But people did not bestir themselves to alter it, and so
the old custom went on. The country postman was Lee: a trustworthy old
soul with shaky legs.

The next morning, Cole the surgeon came in, vexed. The Squire ought not
to have got up at all the day before, he said, much less have gone to
Worcester; and where was the use of his prescribing remedies if they
were not attended to? Upon that, the Squire (after retorting that he
should do as he pleased in spite of Cole and his remedies, and speaking
in a sort of hoarse and foggy voice) told about posting the bank-note to
Mrs. Todhetley, and what had come of it.

"Well, it's a strange thing," said Cole, when he had turned the news
over in his mind. "What do _you_ think, Johnny?"

He would often say to me when talking of things and people, "What do
_you_ think?" He had a theory that I saw more clearly than others, just
as Duffham at Church Dykely had. I had nothing particular to think about
this: it seemed a hopeless mystery.

"Lee's sure," said Cole, speaking of the postman; "so is Rymer. It could
have been in no other hands on this side the journey."

"The Worcester people say it was not tampered with on their side."

"Have you questioned Rymer about it?"

"Not yet," croaked the Squire. "I meant to have gone to him to-day."

"Which you will not do!" cried Mr. Cole. "But now, look here: I wouldn't
tell people at first that the exchanged note was one of those stolen
ones, if I were you: not even Rymer. No one likes to be mixed up in
robberies. You'd put folks on their guard at once; and any chance word
of enlightenment, that might otherwise be dropped, would be kept in."

We did not quite take him. "_I_ would not," repeated Cole.

"But we must inquire about it," said Tod. "What's to be said of the
note?"

"Say that the bank-note you put in was changed _en route_ for another
one: that the numbers did not tally. That's all you need say at first."

Tod could not see any reason in the argument; but the Squire took up the
idea eagerly, and ordered Tod to do as was suggested. He was unable to
go to Timberdale himself, but was far too impatient to let it rest until
another day, and so Tod was to be his deputy.

With at least a hundred suggestions and injunctions from the Squire--who
only ceased when his voice disappeared completely--we set off, taking
the way of the Ravine. It was a fine spring day: the trees were coming
into leaf, the thorns and other bushes were budding: violets and
primroses nestled at their feet. I picked some early cowslips for a
ball for Lena, and some double white violets for Mrs. Todhetley.

Past Timberdale Court went we; past the church; past Jael Batty's and
the other straggling cottages, and came to the village street. It was
paved: and you can't say that of all villages.

Mr. Rymer was behind his counter: a thin, delicate-faced man, with a
rather sad expression and mild brown eyes. In spite of his poor clothes
and his white apron and the obscure shop he had served in for twenty
years, his face had "gentleman" plainly stamped on it: but he gave you
the idea of being too meek-spirited; as if in any struggle with the
world he could never take his own part.

The shop was a double shop, resembling Salmon's at South Crabb in shape
and arrangements. The drugs and chemicals were on the left-hand side as
you entered; the miscellaneous wares on the other. Horse and cattle
medicines were kept with the drugs: and other things too numerous to
mention, such as pearl barley, pickles, and fish-sauce. The girl,
Margaret Rymer, was serving a woman with a pennyworth of writing-paper
when we went in, and a postage-stamp. Tod asked for Mr. Rymer.

He came forward from the little parlour, at one end of which was the
desk where he did his postal work.

Upon Tod's saying that we wished to speak with him privately, he took
us into the parlour. As we sat down opposite to him, I could not help
thinking what a nice face he had. It was getting very careworn. A
stranger would have given him more than his forty-five years: though
the bright brown hair was abundant still. Tod told his story. The
chemist looked thoroughly surprised, but open and upright as the day.
I saw at once that no fault attached to him.

"A bank-note exchanged as it passed through the post!" he exclaimed.
"But, Mr. Joseph Todhetley, the thing appears impossible."

"It appears so," said Tod. "I was just as unwilling to believe it at
first: but facts are facts."

"I cannot see the motive," said Rymer. "Why should one bank-note be
taken out of a letter, if another were substituted?"

Tod looked at me. Wanting to say that the other was a stolen note, and
was no doubt put in to be got rid of. But the Squire had bound us down.

"Had the note been simply abstracted from the letter, we should be at no
loss to understand that a thief had helped himself to it; but a thief
would not put another note of the same value in its place," went on
Rymer.

"Well, the facts are as I tell you, Mr. Rymer," returned Tod, impatient
at being trammelled and having to tell so lame a tale. "One bank-note
was taken out of the letter and another put in its place. We want you to
help us unravel the mystery."

"I will help you to the utmost of my power," was Rymer's answer.
"But--are you sure you have told me the circumstances correctly?"

"Quite sure," answered Tod. "The thing was done between Worcester
post-office and our house. How it was done, and by whom, is the
question."

"You enclosed the note in the letter yourself at Worcester on Wednesday
afternoon, and put it into the post-office: when we delivered the letter
at Crabb Cot yesterday morning, you found the note inside had been taken
out and another put in? These are the circumstances?"

"Precisely so. Except that it was not I who enclosed the note and took
down its number, but Johnny Ludlow. The Worcester office disclaims
all knowledge of the matter, and so we are thrown on this side of the
journey. Did you go to the station yourself for the letter-bag, Rymer?"

"I did, sir. I brought it home and sorted the letters at that desk,
ready for the two men to take out in the morning. I used to sort all the
letters in the morning, London and others: but lately I've done what we
call the local bags--which come in before bed-time--at night. It saves
time in the morning."

"Do you recollect noticing the letter for Crabb Cot?"

"I think I noticed it. Yes, I feel sure I did. You see, there's often
something or other for you, so that it's not remarkable. But I am sure I
did notice the letter."

"No one could have got to it in the night?"

"What--here?" exclaimed Rymer, opening his eyes in surprise that such a
question should be put. "No, certainly not. The letter-bags are locked
up in this desk, and I keep the key about me."

"And you gave them as usual to Lee in the morning?"

Mr. Rymer knitted his patient brow the least in the world, as if he
thought that Tod's pursuing these questions reflected some suspicion on
himself. He answered very meekly--going over the whole from the first.

"When I brought the Worcester bag in on Wednesday night, I was at home
alone: my wife and daughter happened to be spending the evening with
some friends, and the servant had asked leave to go out. I sorted the
letters, and locked them up as usual in one of the deep drawers of the
desk. I never unlocked it again until the last thing in the morning,
when the other letters that had come in were ready to go out, and the
two men were waiting for them. The letter would be in Lee's packet, of
course--which I delivered to him. But Lee is to be depended on: he would
not tamper with it. That is the whole history so far as I am connected
with it, Mr. Joseph Todhetley. I could not tell you more if I talked
till mid-day."

"What's that, Thomas? Anything amiss with the letters?" called out a
voice at this juncture, as the inner door opened, that shut out the
kitchen.

I knew it. Knew it for Mrs. Rymer's. I didn't like her a bit: and how a
refined man like Rymer (and he was so in all respects) could have made
her his wife seemed to me to be a seven days' wonder. She had a nose as
long as from Timberdale to Crabb Ravine; and her hair and face were red,
and her flounces gaudy. As common a woman as you'd see in a summer's
day, with a broad Brummagem accent. But she was very capable, and not
unkindly natured. The worst Timberdale said of her was, that she had
done her best to spoil that ugly son of hers.

Putting her head, ornamented with yellow curl-papers, round the
door-post, she saw us seated there, and drew it away again. Her sleeves
were rolled up, and she had on a coarse apron; altogether was not
dressed for company. Letting the door stand ajar, she asked again if
anything was amiss, and went on with her work at the same time: which
sounded like chopping suet. Mr. Rymer replied in a curt word or two,
as if he felt annoyed she should interfere. She would not be put off:
strong-minded women never are: and he had to give her the explanation.
A five-pound bank-note had been mysteriously lost out of a letter
addressed to Mrs. Todhetley. The chopping stopped.

"Stolen out of it?"

"Well--yes; it may be said so."

"But why do you call it mysterious?"

Mr. Rymer said why. That the bank-note had not, in one sense, been
stolen; since another of the same value had been substituted for it.

Chop, chop, chop: Mrs. Rymer had begun again vigorously.

"I'd like to know who's to make top or tail of such a story as that,"
she called out presently. "_Has_ anything been lost, or not?"

"Yes, I tell you, Susannah: a five-pound note."

Forgetting her curl-papers and the apron, Mrs. Rymer came boldly inside
the room, chopping-knife in hand, and requested further enlightenment.
We told her between us: she stood with her back against the door-post
while she listened.

"When do you say this took place, young gents?"

"On Wednesday night, or Thursday morning. When the letter reached us at
breakfast-time, the job was done."

She said no more then, but went back and chopped faster than ever. Tod
and I had got up to go when she came in again.

"The odd part about it is their putting in a note for the same value,"
cried she. "I never heard of such a thing as that. Why not spend the
other note, and make no bother over it?"

"You would be quite justified in doing so under the circumstances, Mr.
Todhetley," said the quieter husband.

"But we can't," returned Tod, hotly--and all but said more than he was
to say.

"Why not?" asked she.

"Because it's not ours; there, Mrs. Rymer."

"Well, I know what I'd say--if the chance was given me," returned she,
resenting Tod's manner. "That the note found in the letter was the one
put into it at Worcester. Changed in the post! It does not stand to
reason."

"But, my dear----" her husband was beginning.

"Now, Thomas Rymer, that's what I _think_: and so would you, if you had
a grain of sense beyond a gander's. And now good-morning, young gents:
my pudding won't get done for dinner at this rate."

Mr. Rymer came with us through the shop to the door. I shook hands with
him: and Tod's nose went up in the air. But I think it lies in what you
see a man is, by mind and nature, whether he is your equal, and you feel
proud to think he is so--not in the fact of his wearing an apron. There
are some lords in the land I wouldn't half care to shake hands with as
I would with Thomas Rymer.

"I hope you will pardon me for reverting to my first opinion, Mr.
Todhetley," he said, turning to Tod--"but indeed I think there must be
some mistake. Mrs. Rymer may be right--that the note found in the letter
was the one put into it."

Tod flung away. The facts he had obstinately refused to believe at
first, he had so fully adopted now, that any other opinion offended him.
He was in a passion when I caught him up.

"To think that the pater should have sent us there like two fools,
Johnny! Closing our mouths so that we could not speak the truth."

"Rymer only three parts believes it. His wife not at all."

"His wife be sugared! It's nothing to her. And all through the
suggestion of that precious calf, Cole. Johnny, I think I shall act on
my own judgment, and go back and tell Rymer the note was a stolen one."

"The pater told us not to."

"Stuff! Circumstances alter cases. He would have told it himself before
he had been with Rymer two minutes. The man's hands are partly tied, you
see; knowing only half the tale."

"Well, _I_ won't tell him."

"Nobody asked you. Here goes. And the Squire will say I've done right."

Rymer was standing at his door still. The shop was empty, and there were
no ears near. Tod lowered his voice, though.

"The truth is, Mr. Rymer, that the note, substituted in the letter for
ours, was one of those two lost by the butcher at Tewkesbury. I conclude
you heard of the robbery."

"One of those two!" exclaimed Rymer.

"Yes: Salmon at South Crabb recognized it yesterday when we were asking
him to give change for it."

"But why not have told me this at once, Mr. Joseph?"

"Because the Squire and Cole, laying their wise heads together this
morning, thought it might be better not to let that get abroad: it would
put people on their guard, they said. You see now where the motive lay
for exchanging the notes."

"Of course I do," said Mr. Rymer in his quiet way. "But it is very
unaccountable. I cannot imagine where the treason lies."

"Not on this side, seemingly," remarked Tod: "The letter appears to have
passed through no one's hands but Lee's: and he is safe."

"Safe and sure. It must have been accomplished at Worcester. Or--in the
railway train," he slowly added. "I have heard of such things."

"You had better keep counsel at present as to the stolen note, Mr.
Rymer."

"I will until you give me leave to speak. All I can do to assist in the
discovery is heartily at Squire Todhetley's service. I'd transport these
rogues, for my part."

We carried our report home--that the thing had not been, and could not
have been, effected on the Timberdale side, unless old Lee was to be
suspected: which was out of the question.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Time went on, and it grew into more of a mystery than ever. Not as to
the fact itself or the stolen note, for all that was soon known high and
low. The Worcester office exonerated itself from suspicion, as did the
railway letter-van. The van let off its resentment in a little private
sneering: but the office waxed hot, and declared the fraud must lie at
the door of Timberdale. And so the matter was given up for a bad job,
the Squire submitting to the loss of his note.

But a curious circumstance occurred, connected with Thomas Rymer. And,
to me, his behaviour had seemed almost curious throughout. Not at that
first interview--as I said, he was open, and, so to say, indifferent
then; but soon afterwards his manner changed.

On the day following that interview, the Squire, who was very restless
over it, wanting the thing to come to light in no time, sent me again to
Rymer's, to know if he had learned any news. Rymer said he had not; and
his manner was just what it had been the past day. I could have staked
my life, if necessary, that the man _believed_ what he said--that news
must be looked for elsewhere, not at Timberdale. I am sure that he
thought it impossible that the theft could have been effected after the
letters came into his hands. But some days later on, when the whole
matter had been disclosed, and the public knew as much about it as we
did, the Squire, well of his cold, thought he would have a talk with
Rymer himself, went over, and took me with him.

I shall not forget it. In Rymer's window, the chemical side, there was
a picture of a bullock eating up some newly-invented cattle-food and
growing fat upon it. It caught the Squire's eye. Whilst he stopped to
read the advertisement, I went in. The moment Rymer saw me--his daughter
called to him to come out of the parlour where he was at dinner--his
face turned first red, and then as pale as death.

"Mr. Todhetley thought he would like to come and see you, Mr. Rymer."

"Yes, yes," he said, in an agitated sort of tone, and then he stooped
to put some jars closer together under the counter; but I thought he
knew how white he was, and wanted to hide it.

When the Squire came in, asking first of all about the new cattle-food,
he noticed nothing. Rymer was very nearly himself then, and said he had
taken the agency, and old Massock had ordered some of it.

Then they talked about the note. Rymer's tone was quite different from
what it had been before; though whether I should have noticed it but
for his white face I can hardly tell. That had made me notice _him_.
He spoke in a low, timid voice, saying no more than he was obliged to
say, as if the subject frightened him. One thing I saw--that his hands
trembled. Some camomile blows lay on a white paper on the counter, and
he began doing them up with shaky fingers.

Was his wife given to eavesdropping? I should have thought not--she was
too independent for it. But there she was, standing just within the
little parlour, and certainly listening. The Squire caught sight of her
gown, and called out, "How d'ye do, Mrs. Rymer?" upon which she came
forward. There was a scared look on her face also, as if its impudence
had shrunk out of it. She did not stay an instant--just answered the
Squire, and went away again.

"We must come to the bottom of the business somehow, you know, Rymer,"
concluded the Squire, as he was leaving. "It would never do to let the
thief get off. What I should think is, that it must be the same fellow
who robbed the butcher----"

"No, no," hastily interrupted Rymer.

"_No!_ One of the gang, then. Any way, you'll help us all you can. I
should like to bring the lot to trial. If you get to learn anything,
send me word at once."

Rymer answered "Yes," and attended us to the door. Then the Squire went
back to the cattle-food; but we got away at last.

"Thomas Rymer breaks, Johnny, I think. He doesn't seem in spirits
somehow. It's hard for a man to be in a shop all day long, from year's
end to year's end, and never have an hour's holiday."

Ever after this, when the affair was spoken of with Rymer, he showed
more or less the same sort of shrinking--as if the subject gave him some
terrible pain. Nobody but myself noticed it; and I only because I looked
out for it. I believe he saw I thought something; for when he caught my
eye, as he did more than once, his own fell.

But some curious circumstances connected with him have to be told yet.
One summer evening, when it was getting towards dusk, he came over to
Crabb Cot to see the Squire. Very much to the pater's surprise, Rymer
put a five-pound note into his hand.

"Is the money found?" cried he, eagerly.

"No, sir, it is not found," said Rymer, in a subdued tone. "It seems
likely to remain a mystery to the last. But I wish to restore it myself.
It lies upon my conscience--being postmaster here--that such a loss
should have taken place. With three parts of the public, and more, it is
the Timberdale side that gets the credit of being to blame. And so--it
weighs heavily upon me. Though I don't see how I could have prevented
it: and I lie awake night after night, thinking it over."

The Squire stared for awhile, and then pushed back the note.

"Why, goodness, man!" cried he, when his amazement let him speak, "you
don't suppose I'd take the money from you! What in the world!--what
right have you to bear the loss? You must be dreaming."

"I should feel better satisfied," said poor Rymer, in his subdued voice
of pain. "Better satisfied."

"And how do you think _I_ should feel?" stamped the Squire, nearly
flinging the note into the fire. "Here, put it up; put it up. Why, my
good fellow, don't, for mercy's sake, let this bother take your senses
away. It's no more your fault that the letter was rifled than it was
mine. Well, this is a start--your coming to say this."

They went on, battling it out. Rymer praying him to take the note as if
he'd pray his life away; the Squire accusing the other of having gone
clean mad, to think of such a thing. I happened to go into the room in
the middle of it, but they had not leisure to look at me. It ended in
Rymer's taking back the note: it could not have ended in any other
manner: the Squire vowing, if he did not, that he should go before the
magistrates for lunacy.

"Get the port wine, Johnny."

Rymer declined to take any: his head was not accustomed to wine, he
said. The Squire poured out a bumper and made him drink it: telling him
he believed it was something of the kind his head wanted, or it would
never have got such a wild notion into it as the errand he had come upon
that evening.

A few minutes after Rymer had left, I heard the Squire shouting to me,
and went back to the room. He had in his hand a little thin note-case of
green leather, something like two leaves folded together.

"Rymer must have dropped this, Johnny, in putting it into his pocket.
The note is in it. You had better run after him."

I took it, and went out. But which way had Rymer gone? I could see far
along the solitary road, and it was light enough yet, but no one was in
view, so I guessed he was taking the short-cut through the Ravine,
braving the ghost, and I went across the field and ran down the zigzag
path. Wasn't it gloomy there!

Well, it was a surprise! Thinking himself alone, he had sat down on
the stump of a tree, and was sobbing with all his might: sobs that had
prevented his hearing me. There was no time for me to draw back, or for
him to hide his trouble. I could only hold out the green case and make
the best of it.

"I am afraid you are in some great trouble, Mr. Rymer?"

He got up and was quiet at once. "The best of us have trouble at times,
Master Johnny."

"What can I do for you?"

"Nothing. Nothing. Except forget that you have seen me giving way. It
was very foolish of me: but there are moments when--when one loses
self-control."

Either through his awkwardness or mine, the leaves of the case opened,
and the bank-note fluttered out. I picked it up and gave it to him. Our
eyes met in the gloom.

"I think you know," he whispered.

"I think I suspect. Don't be afraid: no one else does: and I'll never
drop a hint to mortal man."

Putting my hand into his that he might feel its clasp, he took it as it
was meant, and wrung it in answer. Had we been of the same age, I could
have felt henceforth like his brother.

"It will be my death-blow," he whispered. "Heaven knows I was not
prepared for it. I was unsuspicious as a child."

He went his way with his grief and his load of care, and I went mine, my
heart aching for him. I am older now than I was then: and I have learnt
to think that God sends these dreadful troubles to try us, that we may
fly from them to Him. Why else _should_ they come?

And I dare say you have guessed how it was. The time came when it was
all disclosed; so I don't break faith in telling it. That ill-doing son
of Rymer's had been the thief. He was staying at home at the time with
one of the notes stolen from Tewkesbury in his possession: some of his
bad companions had promised him a bonus if he could succeed in passing
it. It was his mother who surreptitiously got the keys of the desk for
him, that he might open it in the night: he made the excuse to her
that there was a letter in the Worcester bag for himself under a false
direction, which he must secure, unsuspected. To do Madam Rymer justice,
she thought no worse: and it was she who in her fright, when the
commotion arose about the Tewkesbury note, confessed to her husband that
she had let Ben have the keys that night. There could be no doubt in
either of their minds after that. The son, too, had decamped. It was
to look for our letter he had wanted the keys. For he knew it might
be coming, with the note in it: he was on the platform at Timberdale
railway-station in the morning--I saw him standing there--and must have
heard what Mrs. Todhetley said. And that was the whole of the mystery.

But I would have given the money from my own pocket twice over, to have
prevented it happening, for Thomas Rymer's sake.




II.

A LIFE OF TROUBLE.


Mrs. Todhetley says that you may sometimes read a person's fate in their
eyes. I don't know whether it's true. She holds to it that when the eyes
have a sad, mournful expression naturally, their owner is sure to have a
life of sorrow. Of course such instances may be found: and Thomas
Rymer's was one of them.

You can look back and read what was said of him: "A thin, delicate-faced
man, with a rather sad expression and mild brown eyes." The sad
expression was _in_ the eyes: that was certain: thoughtful, dreamy, and
would have been painfully sad but for its sweetness. But it is not given
to every one to discern this inward sadness in the look of another.

It was of no avail to say that Thomas Rymer had brought trouble upon
himself, and marred his own fortune. His father was a curate in
Warwickshire, poor in pence, rich in children. Thomas was apprenticed
to a doctor in Birmingham, who was also a chemist and druggist. Tom
had to serve in the shop, take out teeth, make up the physic, and go
round with his master to fevers and rheumatisms. Whilst he was doing
this, the curate died: and thenceforth Thomas would have to make his
own way in the world, with not a soul to counsel him.

Of course he might have made it. But Fate, or Folly, was against him.
Some would have called it fate, Mrs. Todhetley for one; others might
have said it was folly.

Next door to the doctor's was a respectable pork and sausage shop,
carried on by a widow, one Mrs. Bates. Rymer took to going in there
of an evening when he had the time, and sitting in the parlour behind
with Mrs. Bates and her two daughters. Failing money for theatres and
concerts, knowing no friends to drop in to, young fellows drift anywhere
for relaxation when work is done. Mrs. Bates, a good old motherly soul,
as fat as her best pig, bade him run in whenever he felt inclined. Rymer
liked her for her hearty kindness, and liked uncommonly the dish of hot
sausages, or chops, that would come on the table for supper. The worst
was, he grew to like something else--and that was Miss Susannah.

If it's true that people are attracted by their contrasts, there might
have been some excuse for Rymer. He was quiet and sensitive, with a
refined mind and person, and retiring manners. Susannah Bates was free,
loud, good-humoured, and vulgar. Some people, it was said, called her
handsome then; but, judging by what she was later, we thought it must
have been a very broad style of beauty. The Miss Bateses were intended
by their mother to be useful; but they preferred being stylish. They
played "Buy a broom" and other fashionable tunes on the piano, spent
time over their abundant hair, wore silks for best, carried a fan to
chapel on Sundays, and could not be persuaded to serve in the shop on
the busiest day. Good Mrs. Bates managed the shop herself with the help
of her foreman: a steady young man, whose lodgings were up a court hard
by.

Well, Tom Rymer, the poor clergyman's son, grew to be as intimate there
as if it were his home, and he and Susannah struck up a friendship that
continued all the years he was at the next door. Just before he was out
of his time, Mrs. Bates died.

The young foreman somehow contrived to secure the business for himself,
and married the elder Miss Bates off-hand. There ensued some frightful
squabbling between the sisters. The portion of money said to be due to
Miss Susannah was handed over to her with a request that she should find
herself another home. Rymer came of age just then, and the first thing
he did was to give her a home himself by making her his wife.

There was the blight. His prospects were over from that day. The little
money she had was soon spent: he must provide a living how he could.
Instead of qualifying himself for a surgeon, he took a situation as a
chemist and druggist's assistant: and, later, set up for himself in the
shop at Timberdale. For the first ten years of his married life, he was
always intending to pass the necessary examinations: each year saying it
should be done the next. But expenses came on thick and fast; and that
great need with every one, present wants, had to be supplied first. He
gave up the hope then: went on in the old jog-trot line, and subsided
into an obscure rural chemist and druggist.

The son, Benjamin, was intended for a surgeon. As a preliminary, he was
bound apprentice to his father in order to learn the mysteries of drugs
and chemicals. When out of his time, he was transferred to a chemist and
druggist's at Tewkesbury, who was also in practice as a medical man.
There, Mr. Benjamin fell in with bad companions; a lapse that, in course
of time, resulted in his coming home, changing the note in our letter
for the stolen one, and then decamping from Timberdale. What with the
blow the discovery itself was to Rymer, and what with the concealing of
the weighty secret--for he had to conceal it: he could not go and inform
against his own son--it pretty nearly did for him. Rymer tried to make
reparation in one sense of the word--by the bringing of that five-pound
bank-note to the Squire. For which the Squire, ignorant of the truth,
thought him a downright lunatic.

For some months, after that evening, Thomas Rymer was to be seen in
his shop as usual, growing to look more and more like a ghost. Which
Darbyshire, the Timberdale doctor, said was owing to liver, and
physicked him well.

But the physic did not answer. Of all obstinate livers, as Darbyshire
said, Rymer's was about the worst he had ever had to do with. Some days
he could not go into the shop at all, and Margaret, his daughter, had to
serve the customers. She could make up prescriptions just as well as he,
and people grew to trust her. They had a good business. It was known
that Rymer's drugs were genuine; had direct from the fountain-head. He
had given up the post-office, and the grocer opposite had taken to
it--Salmon, who was brother to Salmon of South Crabb. In this uncertain
way, a week ill, and a week tolerably well, Rymer continued to go on for
about two years.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Margaret Rymer stood behind the counter: a neat little girl in grey
merino. Her face was just like her father's; the same delicate features,
the sweet brown eyes, and the look of innate refinement. Margaret
belonged to his side of the house; there was not an atom of the
Brummagem Bateses in her. The Squire, who remembered her grandfather
the clergyman, said Margaret took after him. She was in her nineteenth
year now, and for steadiness you might have trusted her alone right
across the world and back again.

She stood behind the counter, making up some medicine. A woman in a
coarse brown cloak with a showy cotton handkerchief tied on her head was
waiting for it. It had been a dull autumn day: evening was coming on,
and the air felt chilly.

"How much be it, please, miss?" asked the woman, as Margaret handed her
the bottle of mixture, done up in white paper.

"Eighteenpence. Thank you."

"Be the master better?" the woman turned round from the door to inquire,
as if the state of Mr. Rymer's health had been an afterthought.

"I think he is a little. He has a very bad cold, and is lying in bed
to-day. Thank you for asking. Good-night."

When dusk came on, Margaret shut the street-door and went into the
parlour. Mrs. Rymer sat there writing a letter. Margaret just glanced
in.

"Mother, can you listen to the shop, please?"

"I can if I choose--what should hinder me?" responded Mrs. Rymer. "Where
are you off to, Margaret?"

"To sit with my father for a few minutes."

"You needn't bother to leave the shop for that. I dare say he's asleep."

"I won't stay long," said Margaret. "Call me, please, if any one comes
in."

She escaped up the staircase, which stood in the nook between the shop
and the parlour. Thomas Rymer lay back in the easy-chair by his bit of
bedroom fire. He looked as ill as a man could look, his face thin and
sallow, the fine nose pinched, the mild brown eyes mournful.

"Papa, I did not know you were getting up," said Margaret, in a soft low
tone.

"Didn't you hear me, child?" was his reply, for the room was over the
shop. "I have been long enough about it."

"I thought it was my mother moving about."

"She has not been here all the afternoon. What is she doing?"

"I think she is writing a letter."

Mr. Rymer groaned--which might have been caused by the pain that he
was always feeling. Mrs. Rymer's letters were few and far between, and
written to one correspondent only--her son Benjamin. That Benjamin was
random and must be getting a living in any chance way, or not getting
one at all, and that he had never been at home for between two and
three years, Margaret knew quite well. But she knew no worse. The
secret hidden between Mr. and Mrs. Rymer, that they never spoke of to
each other, had been kept from her.

"I wish you had not got up," said Margaret. "You are not well enough to
come down to-night."

He looked at her, rather quickly; and spoke after a pause.

"If I don't make an effort--as Darbyshire tells me--it may end in my
becoming a confirmed invalid, child. I must get down while I can."

"You will get better soon, papa; Mr. Darbyshire says so," she answered,
quietly swallowing down a sigh.

"Ay, I know he does. I hope it will be so, please God. My life has been
only a trouble throughout, Margaret; but I should like to struggle with
it yet for all your sakes."

Looking at him as he sat there, the firelight playing upon his worn face
with its subdued spirit, you might have seen it was true--that his life
had been a continuous trouble. Was he born to it? or did it only come
upon him through marrying Susannah Bates? On the surface of things, lots
seemed very unequally dealt out in this world. What had been the lot of
Thomas Rymer? The poor son of a poor curate, he had known little but
privation in his earlier years; then came the long drudgery of his
apprenticeship, then his marriage, and the longer drudgery of his
after-life. An uncongenial and unsuitable marriage--and he had felt it
to the backbone. From twenty to thirty years had Rymer toiled in a shop
late and early; never taking a day's rest or a day's holiday, for some
one must always be on duty, and he had no help or substitute. Even on
Sundays he must be at hand, lest his neighbours should be taken ill
and want drugs. If he went to church, there was no certainty that his
servant-maid--generally a stout young woman in her teens, with a black
face and rough hair--would not astonish the congregation by flying up
to his pew-door to call him out. Indeed the vision was not so very
uncommon. Where, then, could have been Rymer's pleasure in life? He
had none; it was all work. And upon the work came the trouble.

Just as the daughter, Margaret, was like her father, so the son,
Benjamin, resembled his mother. But for the difference of years, and
that his red hair was short and hers long, he might have put on a lace
cap, and sat for her portrait. He was the eldest of the children;
Margaret the youngest, those between had died. Seven years between
children makes a difference, and Margaret with her gentleness had always
been afraid of rough Benjamin.

But whether a child is ugly or handsome, it's all the same to the
parents, and for some years the only white spot in Thomas Rymer's life
had been the love of his little Benjamin. For the matter of that, as a
child, Ben was rather pretty. He grew up and turned out wild; and it
was just as great a blow as could have fallen upon Rymer. But when that
horrible thing was brought home to him--taking the bank-note out of the
letter, and substituting the stolen one for it--then Rymer's heart gave
in. Ever since that time it had been as good as breaking.

Well, that was Thomas Rymer's lot in life. Some people seem, on the
contrary, to have nothing but sunshine. Do you know what Mrs. Todhetley
says?--that the greater the cloud here, the brighter will be the
recompense hereafter. Looking at Thomas Rymer's face as the fire played
on it--its goodness of expression, almost that of a martyr; remembering
his prolonged battle with the world's cares, and his aching heart;
knowing how inoffensive he had been towards his fellow-creatures, ever
doing them a good turn when it lay in his power, and never an ill
one--one could only hope that his recompense would be of the largest.

"Had many people in this afternoon, Margaret?"

"Pretty well, papa."

Mr. Rymer sighed. "When I get stronger----"

"Margaret! Shop."

The loud coarse summons was Mrs. Rymer's. Margaret's spirit recoiled
from it the least in the world. In spite of her having been brought up
to the "shop," there had always been something in her innate refinement
that rebelled against it and against having to serve in it.

"A haperth o' liquorish" was the extensive order from a small child,
whose head did not come much above the counter. Margaret served it
at once: the liquorice, being often in demand, was kept done up in
readiness. The child laid down the halfpenny and went out with a bang.

"I may as well run over with the letter," thought Margaret--alluding to
an order she had written to London for some drug they were out of. "And
there's my mother's. Mother," she added, going to the parlour-door, "do
you want your letter posted?"

"I'll post it myself when I do," replied Mrs. Rymer. "Ain't it almost
time you had the gas lighted? That shop must be in darkness."

It was so, nearly. But the gas was never lighted until really needed, in
the interests of economy. Margaret ran across the road, put her letter
into the post in Salmon's window, and ran back again. She stood for
a moment at the door, looking at a huge lumbering caravan that was
passing--a ménage on wheels, as seen by the light within its small
windows. "It must be on its way to Worcester fair," she thought.

"Is it you, Margaret? How d'ye do?"

Some great rough man had come up, and was attempting to kiss her.
Margaret started back with a cry. She would have closed the door against
him; but he was the stronger and got in.

"Why, what possesses the child! Don't you know me?"

Every pulse in Margaret Rymer's body tingled to pain as she recognized
him. It was her brother Benjamin. Better, than this, that it had been
what she fancied--some rude stranger, who in another moment would have
passed on and been gone for ever. Benjamin's coming was always the
signal for discomfort at home, and Margaret felt half-paralyzed with
dismay.

"How are the old folk, Maggie?"

"Papa is very ill," she answered, her voice slightly trembling. "My
mother is well as usual. I think she was writing to you this afternoon."

"Governor ill! So I've heard. Upstairs a good deal, is he not?"

"Quite half his time, I think."

"Who attends here?"

"I do."

"You!--you little mite! Brought your knowledge of rhubarb to good use,
eh? What's the matter with papa?"

"He has not been well for a long while. I don't know what it is. Mr.
Darbyshire says"--she dropped her voice a little--"that he is sure
there's something on his mind."

"Poor old dad!--just like him! If a woman came in with a broken arm,
he'd take it to heart."

"Benjamin, I think it is _you_ that he has most at heart," the girl took
courage to say.

Mr. Benjamin laughed. "Me! He needn't trouble about me. I am as steady
as old Time, Maggie. I've come home to stay; and I'll prove to him that
I am."

"Come home to stay!" faltered Margaret.

"I can take care of things here. I am better able to do it than you."

"My father will not put me out of my place here," said Margaret,
steadily. "He has confidence in me; he knows I do things just as he
does."

"And for that reason he makes you his substitute! Don't assume, Miss
Maggie; you'd be more in your place stitching wristbands in the parlour
than as the presiding genius in a drug-shop. How d'ye do, mother?"

The sound of his voice had reached Mrs. Rymer. She did not believe her
own ears, and came stealing forth to look, afraid of what she might see.
To give Madam Rymer her due, she was quite as honest-natured as her
husband; and the matter of the bank-note, the wrong use made of the keys
she was foolish enough to lend surreptitiously to Mr. Benjamin, had
brought her no light shock at the time. Ill-conduct in the shape of
billiards, and beer, and idleness, she had found plenty of excuse for in
her son; but when it came to felony, it was another thing altogether.

"It _is_ him!" she muttered, as he saw her, and turned. "Where on earth
have you sprung from?" demanded Mrs. Rymer.

"Not from the skies, mother. Hearing the governor was on the sick list,
I thought I ought to come over and see him."

"None of your lies, Ben," said Mrs. Rymer. "_That_ has not brought you
here. You are in some disgraceful mess again."

"It _has_ brought me here--and nothing else," said Ben: and he spoke
truth. "Ashton of Timberdale----"

A faint groan--a crash as of breaking glass. When they turned to look,
there was Rymer, fallen against the counter in his shock of surprise and
weakness. His arm had thrown down an empty syrup-bottle.

And that's how Benjamin Rymer came home. His father and mother had never
seen him since before the discovery of the trouble; for as soon as he
had changed the bank-note in the letter, he was off. The affair had
frightened him a little--that is, the stir made over it, of which he
had contrived to get notice; since then he had been passably steady,
making a living for himself in Birmingham as assistant to a surgeon
and druggist. He had met Robert Ashton a short time ago (this was the
account he now gave), heard from that gentleman rather a bad account
of his father, and so thought it his duty to give up what he was
about, and come home. His duty! Ben Rymer's duty!!

Ben was a tall, bony fellow, with a passably liberal education. He
might not have been unsteady but for bad companions. Ben did not aid in
robbing the butcher's till--he had not quite come to that--neither was
he privy to it; but he did get persuaded into trying to dispose of one
of the stolen notes. It had been the one desperate act of his life, and
it had sobered him. Time, however, effaces impressions; from two to
three years had gone on since then; nothing had transpired, never so
much as a suspicion had fallen on Mr. Benjamin, and he grew bold and
came home.

Timberdale rubbed its eyes with astonishment that next autumn day, when
it woke up to see Benjamin Rymer in his father's shop, a white apron on,
and serving the customers who went in, as naturally as though he had
never left it. Where had he been all that while? they asked. Improving
himself in his profession, coolly avowed Ben with unruffled face.

And so the one chance--rest of mind--for the father's return to health
and life, went out. The prolonged time, passing without discovery,
giving a greater chance day by day that it might never happen, could but
have a beneficial effect on Mr. Rymer. But when Ben made his appearance,
put his head, so to say, into the very stronghold of danger, all his
sickness and his fear came back again.

Ben did not know why his father kept so poorly and looked so ill. Never
a word, in his sensitiveness, had Mr. Rymer spoken to his son of that
past night's work. Ben might suspect, but he did not know. Mr. Rymer
would come down when he was not fit to do so, and take up his place in
the shop on a stool. Ben made fun of it: in sport more than ill-feeling:
telling the customers to look at the old ghost there. Ben made himself
perfectly at home; would sometimes hold a levée in the shop if his
father was out of it, when he and his friends, young men of Timberdale,
would talk and laugh the roof off.

People talk of the troubles of the world, and say their name is legion:
poverty, sickness, disappointment, disgrace, debt, difficulty; but there
is no trouble the human heart can know like that brought by rebellious
children. To old Rymer, with his capacity for taking things to heart, it
had been as a long crucifixion. And yet--the instinctive love of a
parent cannot die out: recollect David's grief for wicked Absalom:
"Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!"

Still, compared with what he used to be, Ben Rymer was steady. As the
winter approached, there set in another phase of the reformation; for he
pulled up even from the talking and laughing, and became as good as
gold. You might have thought he had taken his dead grandfather, the
clergyman, for a model, and was striving to walk in his steps. He went
to church, read his medical works, was pleasant at home, gentle with
Margaret, and altogether the best son in the world.

"Will it last, Benjamin?" his father asked him sorrowfully.

"It shall last, father; I promise it," was the earnestly-spoken answer.
"Forget the past, and I will never, I hope, try you again."

Ben kept his promise throughout the winter, and seemed likely to keep
it always. Mr. Rymer grew stronger, and was in business regularly, which
gave Ben more leisure for his books. It was thought that a good time had
set in for the Rymers; but, as Mrs. Todhetley says, you cannot control
Fate.

                 *       *       *       *       *

One day, when we were again staying at Crabb Cot, I had to call at the
shop for a box of "Household Pills," Rymer's own making. When any one
was ailing at home, Mrs. Todhetley would administer a dose of these
pills. But that Rymer was so conscientious a man, I should have thought
they were composed of bread and pepper. Mrs. Todhetley pinned her faith
to them, and said they did wonders.

Well, I had to go to Timberdale on other matters, and was told to call,
when there, for a box of these delectable Household Pills. Mr. Rymer and
his son stood behind the counter, the one making up his books, Ben
pounding something in a mortar. Winter was just on the turn, and the
trees and hedges were beginning to shoot into bud. Ben left his pounding
to get the pills.

"Is this Mr. Rymer's? Halloa, Ben! All right. How goes it, old boy?"

The door had been opened with a burst, and the above words met our
ears, in a tone not over-steady. They came from a man who wore sporting
clothes, and his hat very much on one side. Ben Rymer stared in
surprise; his mouth dropped.

But that it was early in the day, and one does not like to libel people,
it might have been thought the gentleman had taken a little too much of
something strong. He swaggered up to the counter, and held out his hand
to Ben. Ben, just then wrapping up the box of pills, did not appear to
see it.

"Had a hunt after you, old fellow," said the loud-voiced stranger. "Been
to Birmingham and all kinds of places. Couldn't think where you'd hid
yourself."

"You are back pretty soon," growled Ben, who certainly did not seem to
relish the visit.

"Been back a month. Couldn't get on in the New World; its folks are
too down for me. I say, I want a word with you. Can't say it here, I
suppose?"

"No," returned Ben, rather savagely.

"Just come out a bit, Ben," resumed the stranger, after a short pause.

"I can't," replied Ben--and his tone sounded more like I won't. "I have
my business to attend to."

"Bother business! Here goes, then: it's your fault if you make me
speak before people. Gibbs has come out of hiding, and is getting
troublesome----"

"If you will go outside and wait, I'll come to you," interrupted Ben at
this, very quickly.

The man turned and swaggered out. Ben gave me the pills with one hand,
and took off his apron with the other. Getting his hat, he was hastening
out, when Mr. Rymer touched his arm.

"Who is that man, Benjamin?"

"A fellow I used to know in Tewkesbury, father."

"What's his name?"

"Cotton. I'll soon despatch him and be back again," concluded Ben, as he
disappeared.

I put down half-a-crown for the pills, and Mr. Rymer left his place to
give me the change. There had been a sort of consciousness between us,
understood though not expressed, since the night when I had seen him
giving way to his emotion in Crabb Ravine. This man's visit brought the
scene back again. Rymer's eyes looked into mine, and then fell.

"Ben is all right now, Mr. Rymer."

"I could not wish him better than he is. It's just as though he were
striving to atone for the past. I thought it would have killed me at the
time."

"I should forget it."

"Forget it I never can. You don't know what it was, Mr. Johnny," he
continued in a sort of frightened tone, a red spot coming into his pale
thin cheeks, "and I trust you never will know. I never went to bed
at night but to lie listening for a summons at my door--the officers
searching for my son, or to tell me he was taken. I never rose in the
morning but my spirit fainted within me, as to what news the day might
bring forth."

Mr. Benjamin and his friend were pacing side by side in the middle
of the street when I went out, probably to be out of the reach of
eavesdroppers. They did not look best pleased with each other; seemed
to be talking sharply.

"I tell you I can't and I won't," Ben was saying, as I passed them in
crossing over. "What do you come after me for? When a fellow wants to
be on the square, you won't let him. As to Gibbs----"

The voices died out of hearing. I went home with the pills, and thought
no more about the matter.

Spring weather is changeable, as we English know only too well. In less
than a week, a storm of sleet and snow was drifting down. In the midst
of it, who should present himself at Crabb Cot at midday but Lee, the
letter-carrier. His shaky old legs seemed hardly able to bear him up
against the storm, as he came into the garden. I opened the door,
wondering what he wanted.

"Please can I see the Squire in private, sir?" asked Lee, who was
looking half angry, half rueful. Lee had never been in boisterous
spirits since the affair of the bank-note took place. Like a great many
more people, he grew fanciful with years, and could not be convinced
but that the suspicion in regard to it lay on _him_.

"Come in out of the storm, Lee. What's up?"

"Please, Mr. Ludlow, sir, let me get to see the Squire," was all his
answer.

The Squire was in his little room, hunting for a mislaid letter in the
piece of furniture he called his bureau. As I shut old Lee in, I heard
him, Lee, begin to say something about the bank-note and Benjamin Rymer.
An instinct of the truth flashed over me--as sure as fate something
connecting Ben with it had come out. In I shot again, to make one at
the conference. The Squire was looking too surprised to notice me.

"It was Mr. Rymer's son who took out the good note and put in the bad
one?" he exclaimed. "Take care what you say, Lee."

Lee stood near the worn hearthrug; his old hat, covered with
snow-flakes, held between his hands. The Squire had put his back
against the bureau and was staring at him through his spectacles, his
nose and face a finer red than ordinary.

The thing had been tracked home to Benjamin Rymer by the man Cotton, Lee
explained in a rambling sort of tale. Cotton, incensed at Rymer's not
helping him to some money--which was what he had come to Timberdale to
ask for--had told in revenge of the past transaction. Cotton had not
been connected with it, but knew of the part taken in it by Rymer.

"I don't believe a syllable of it," said the Squire, stoutly, flinging
himself into his bureau chair, which he twisted round to face the fire.
"You can sit down, Lee. Where did you say you heard this?"

Lee had heard it at the Plough and Harrow, where the man Cotton had been
staying. Jelf, the landlord, had been told it by Cotton himself, and
Jelf in his turn had whispered it to Lee. That was last night: and Lee
had come up with it now to Mr. Todhetley.

"I tell you, Lee, I don't believe a syllable of it," repeated the
Squire.

"It be true as gospel, sir," asserted Lee. "Last night, when I went in
to Jelf's for a drop of beer, being stiff all over with the cold, I
found Jelf in a passion because a guest had gone off without paying part
of his score, leaving nothing but a letter to say he'd send it. Cotton
by name, Jelf explained, and a sporting gent to look at. A good week,
Jelf vowed he'd been there, living on the best. And then Jelf said I had
no cause to be looked down upon any longer, for it was not me that had
done that trick with the bank-notes, but Benjamin Rymer."

"Now just stop, Lee," interrupted the Squire. "Nobody looked down upon
you for it, or suspected you: neither Jelf nor other people. I have told
you so times enough."

"But Jelf knows I thought they did, sir. And he told me this news to put
me a bit at my ease. He----"

"Jelf talks at random when his temper's up," cried the Squire. "If you
believe this story, Lee, you'll believe anything."

"Ben Rymer was staying at home at the time, sir," urged Lee, determined
to have his say. "If he is steady now, it's known what he was then. He
must have got access to the letters somehow, while they lay at his
father's that night, and opened yours and changed the note. Cotton says
Mr. Ben had had the stolen note hid about him for ever so long, waiting
an opportunity to get rid of it."

"Do you mean to accuse Mr. Ben of being one of the thieves who robbed
the butcher's till?" demanded the Squire, growing wrathful.

"Well, sir, I don't go as far as that. The man told Jelf that one of the
stolen notes was given to young Rymer to pass, and he was to have a
pound for himself if he succeeded in doing it."

The Squire would hardly let him finish.

"Cotton said this to Jelf, did he?--and Jelf rehearsed it to you?"

"Yes, sir. Just that much."

"Now look you here, Lee. First of all, to whom have you repeated this
tale?"

"Not to anybody," answered Lee. "I thought I'd better bring it up here,
sir, to begin with."

"And you'd better let it stop here to end with," retorted the Squire.
"That's my best advice to you, Lee. My goodness! Accuse a respectable
man's son of what might transport him, on the authority of a drunken
fellow who runs away from an inn without paying his bill! The likeliest
thing is that this Cotton did it himself. How else should he know about
it? Don't you let your tongue carry this further, Lee, or you may find
yourself in the wrong box."

Lee looked just a little staggered. A faint flush appeared in his
withered face. The Squire's colour was at its fiercest. He was hard at
the best of times to take in extraordinary tales, and utterly scouted
this one. There was no man he had a greater respect for than Thomas
Rymer.

"I hoped you might be for prosecuting, sir. It would set me right with
the world."

"You are a fool, Lee. The world has not thought you wrong yet.
Prosecute! I! Upon this cock-and-bull story! Mr. Rymer would prosecute
me in turn, I expect, if I did. You'd better not let this get to his
ears: you might lose your post."

"Mr. Rymer, sir, must know how wild his son has been."

"Wild! Most of the young men of the present day are that, as it seems to
me," cried the Squire, in his heat. "Mine had better not let me catch
_them_ at it, though. I'd warm their ears well beforehand if I thought
they ever would---- Do you hear, Mr. Johnny?"

I had been leaning on the back of a chair in the quietest corner for
fear of being sent away. When the Squire put himself up like this, he
would say anything.

"To be a bit wild is one thing, Lee; to commit felony quite another:
Rymer's son would be no more guilty of it than you would. It's out of
all reason. And do you take care of your tongue. Look here, man: suppose
I took this up, as you want me, and it was found to have been Cotton or
some other gaol-bird who did it, instead of young Rymer: where would you
be? In prison for defamation of character, if the Rymers chose to put
you there. Be wise in time, Lee, and say no more."

"It might have been as you say, sir--Cotton himself; though I'm sure
that never struck me," returned Lee, veering round to the argument. "One
thing that made me believe it, was knowing that Ben Rymer might easily
get access to the letters."

"And that's just the reason why you should have doubted it,"
contradicted the Squire. "He would be afraid to touch them because of
the ease with which he could do it. Forgive you for coming up, you say?"
added the Squire, as Lee rose with some humble words of excuse. "Of
course I will. But don't forget that a word of this, dropped abroad,
might put your place, as postman, in jeopardy."

"And that would never do," said Lee, shaking his head.

"_I_ should think not. It's cold to-day, isn't it?"

"Frightful cold, sir."

"And you could come through it with this improbable story! Use your
sense another time, Lee. Here, Johnny, take Lee into the kitchen, and
tell them to give him some cold beef and beer."

I handed him over, with the order, to Molly; who went into one of her
tantrums at it, for she was in the midst of pastry-making. The Squire
was sitting with his head bent, looking as perplexed as an owl, when I
got back to the room.

"Johnny--shut the door. Something has come into my mind. Do you
recollect Thomas Rymer's coming up one evening, and wanting to give me
a five-pound note?"

"Quite well, sir."

"Well; I--I am not so sure now that there's nothing in this fresh tale."

I sat down; and in a low voice told him all. Of the fit of sobbing in
which I had found Rymer that same night in the Ravine; and that I had
known all along it _was_ the son who had done it.

"Bless my heart!" cried the Squire, softly, very much taken aback. "It's
that, perhaps, that has been making Rymer so ill."

"He said it was slowly killing him, sir."

"Mercy on him!--poor fellow! An ill-doing scapegrace of a rascal!
Johnny, how thankful we ought to be when our sons turn out well, and
not ill! But I think a good many turn out ill nowadays. If you should
live to have sons, sir, take care how you bring them up."

"I think Mr. Rymer must have tried to bring Ben up well," was my answer.

"Yes; but did the mother?" retorted the Squire. "More responsibility
lies with them than with the father, Johnny; and she spoilt him. Take
care, sir, how you choose a wife when the time comes. And there was that
miserable lot the lad fell in with at Tewkesbury! Johnny, that Cotton
must be an awful blackguard."

"I hope he'll live to feel it."

"Look here, we must hush this up," cried the Squire, sinking his voice
and glancing round the room. "I wouldn't bring fresh pain on poor Rymer
for the world. You must forget that you've told me, Johnny."

"Yes, that I will."

"It's only a five-pound note, after all. And if it were fifty pounds, I
wouldn't stir in it. No, nor for five hundred; be hanged if I would!
It's not I that would bring the world about Thomas Rymer's ears. I
knew his father and respected him, Johnny; though his sermons were
three-quarters of an hour long, sometimes; and I respect Thomas Rymer.
You and I must keep this close. And I'll make a journey to Timberdale
when this snow-storm's gone, Johnny, and frighten Jelf out of his life
for propagating libellous tales."

That's where it ought to have ended. The worst is, "oughts" don't go for
much in the world; as perhaps every reader of this paper has learned to
know.

When Lee appeared the next morning with the letters as usual, I went out
to him. He dropped his voice to speak, as he put them in my hand.

"They say Benjamin Rymer is off, sir."

"Off where?"

"Somewhere out of Timberdale."

"Off for what?"

"I don't know, sir. Jelf accused me of having carried tales there, and
called me a jackass for my pains. He said that what he had told me
wasn't meant to be repeated again, and I ought not to have gone telling
it about, especially to the Rymers themselves; that it might not be
true----"

"As the Squire said yesterday, you know, Lee."

"Yes, sir. I answered Jelf that it couldn't have been me that had gone
talking to the Rymers, for I had not as much as seen them. Any way, he
said, somebody had, for they knew of it, and Benjamin had gone off in
consequence. Jelf's as cross over it as two sticks. It's his own fault;
why did he tell me what wasn't true?"

Lee went off--looking cross also. After breakfast I related this to the
Squire. He didn't seem to like it, and walked about thinking.

"Johnny, I can't stir in it, you see," he said presently. "If it got
abroad, people might talk about compromising a felony, and all that sort
of rubbish: and I am a magistrate. You must go. See Rymer: and make him
understand--without telling him in so many words, you know--that there's
nothing to fear from me, and he may call Ben back again. If the young
man has begun to lead a new life, Heaven forbid that I, having sons
myself, should be a stumbling-block in the way of it."

It was striking twelve when I reached Timberdale. Margaret said her
father was poorly, having gone out in the storm of the previous day and
caught a chill. He was in the parlour alone, cowering over the fire. In
the last few hours he seemed to have aged years. I shut the door.

"What has happened?" I whispered. "I have come on purpose to ask you."

"That which I have been dreading all along," he said in a quiet,
hopeless tone. "Benjamin has run away. He got some information, it
seems, from the landlord of the Plough and Harrow, and was off the next
hour."

"Well, now, the Squire sent me to you privately, Mr. Rymer, to say that
Ben might come back again. He has nothing to fear."

"The Squire knows it, then?"

"Yes. Lee came up about it yesterday: Jelf had talked to him. Mr.
Todhetley did not believe a word of it: he blew up Lee like anything
for listening to such a tale; he means to blow up Jelf for repeating
anything said by a vagabond like Cotton. Lee came round to his way of
thinking. Indeed there's nothing to be afraid of. Jelf is eating his
words. The Squire would not harm your son for the world."

Rymer shook his head. He did not doubt the Squire's friendly feeling,
but thought it was out of his hands. He told me all he knew about it.

"Benjamin came to me yesterday morning in a great flurry, saying
something was wrong, and he must absent himself. Was it about the
bank-note, I asked--and it was the first time a syllable in regard to it
had passed between us," broke off Rymer. "Jelf had given him a friendly
hint of what had dropped from the man Cotton--you were in the shop that
first day when he came in, Mr. Johnny--and Benjamin was alarmed. Before
I had time to collect my thoughts, or say further, he was gone."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know. I went round at once to Jelf, and the man told me all.
Jelf knows the truth; that is quite clear. He says he has spoken only to
Lee; is sorry now for having done that, and he will hush it up as far as
he can."

"Then it will be quite right, Mr. Rymer. Why should you be taking it in
this way?"

"I am ill," was all he answered. "I caught a chill going round to the
Plough and Harrow. So far as mental illness goes, we may battle with it
to the end, strength from above being given to us; but when it takes
bodily form--why, there's nothing for it but giving in."

Even while we spoke, he was seized with what seemed to be an ague. Mrs.
Rymer appeared with some scalding broth, and I said I would run for
Darbyshire.

                 *       *       *       *       *

A few days went on, and then news came up to Crabb Cot that Mr. Rymer
lay dying. Robert Ashton, riding back from the hunt in his scarlet coat
and white cords on his fine grey horse (the whole a mass of splashes
with the thaw) pulled up at the door to say How d'ye do? and mentioned
it amidst other items. It was just a shock to the Squire, and nothing
less.

"Goodness preserve us!--and all through that miserable five-pound note,
Johnny!" he cried in a wild flurry. "Where's my hat and top-coat?"

Away to Timberdale by the short cut through the Ravine, never heeding
the ghost--although its traditional time of appearing, the dusk of
evening, was drawing on--went the Squire. He thought Rymer must be ill
through fear of him; and he accused me of having done my errand of peace
badly.

It was quite true--Thomas Rymer lay dying. Darbyshire was coming out of
the house as the Squire reached it, and said so. Instead of being sorry,
he flew in a passion and attacked the doctor.

"Now look you here, Darbyshire--this won't do. We can't have people
dying off like this for nothing. If you don't cure him, you had better
give up doctoring."

"How d'you mean for nothing?" asked Darbyshire, who knew the Squire
well.

"It can't be for much: don't be insolent. Because a man gets a bit of
anxiety on his mind, is he to be let die?"

"I've heard nothing about anxiety," said Darbyshire. "He caught a chill
through going out that day of the snow-storm, and it settled on a vital
part. That's what ails him, Squire."

"And you can't cure the chill! Don't tell me."

"Before this time to-morrow, Thomas Rymer will be where there's neither
killing nor curing," was the answer. "I told them yesterday to send for
the son: but they don't know where he is."

The Squire made a rush through the shop and up to the bedroom, hardly
saying, "With your leave," or, "By your leave." Thomas Rymer lay in bed
at the far end; his white face whiter than the pillow; his eyes sunken;
his hands plucking at the counterpane. Margaret left the room when the
Squire went in. He gave one look; and knew that he saw death there.

"Rymer, I'd almost have given my own life to save you from this," cried
he, in the shock. "Oh, my goodness! what's to be done?"

"I seem to have been waiting for it all along; to have seen the exposure
coming," said Thomas Rymer, his faint fingers resting in the Squire's
strong ones. "And now that it's here, I can't battle with it."

"Now, Rymer, my poor fellow, couldn't you--_couldn't_ you make a bit of
an effort to live? To please me: I knew your father, mind. It can't be
right that you should die."

"It must be right; perhaps it is well. I can truly say with old
Jacob that few and evil have the days of my life been. Nothing but
disappointment has been my lot here; struggle upon struggle, pain upon
pain, sorrow upon sorrow. I think my merciful Father will remember it in
the last great account."

                 *       *       *       *       *

He died at five o'clock in the morning. Lee told us of it when he
brought up the letters at breakfast-time. The Squire let fall his knife
and fork.

"It's a shame and a sin, though, Johnny, that sons should inflict this
cruel sorrow upon their parents," he said later. "Rymer has been brought
down to the grave by his son before his hair was grey. I wonder how
_their_ accounts will stand at the great reckoning?"




III.

HESTER REED'S PILLS.


We were at our other and chief home, Dyke Manor: and Tod and I were
there for the short Easter holidays, which were shorter in those days
than they are in these.

It was Easter Tuesday. The Squire had gone riding over to old Jacobson's
with Tod. I, having nothing else to do, got the mater to come with me
for a practice on the church organ; and we were taking the round home
again through the village, Church Dykely.

Easter was very late that year. It was getting towards the end of April:
and to judge by the weather, it might have been the end of May, the days
were so warm and glorious.

In passing the gate of George Reed's cottage, Mrs. Todhetley stopped.

"How are the babies, Hester?"

Hester Reed, sunning her white cap and clean cotton gown in the garden,
the three elder children around, watering the beds with a doll's
watering-pot, and a baby hiding its face on her shoulder, dropped a
curtsy as she answered--

"They be but poorly, ma'am, thank you. Look up, Susy," turning the
baby's face upwards to show it: and a pale mite of a face it was, with
sleepy eyes. "For a day or two past they've not seemed the thing; and
they be both cross."

"I should think their teeth are troubling them, Hester."

"Maybe, ma'am. I shouldn't wonder. Hetty, she seems worse than Susy.
She's a-lying there in the basket indoors. Would you please spare a
minute to step in and look at her, ma'am?"

Mrs. Todhetley opened the gate. "I may as well go in and see, Johnny,"
she said to me in an undertone: "I fear both the children are rather
sickly."

The other baby, "Hetty," lay in the kitchen in a clothes-basket. It had
just the same sort of puny white face as its sister. These two were
twins, and about a year old. When they were born, Church Dykely went on
finely at Hester Reed, asking her if she would not have had enough with
one new child but she must go and set up two.

"It does seem very poorly," remarked Mrs. Todhetley, stooping over the
young mortal (which was not cross just now, but very still and quiet),
and letting it clasp its little fist round one of her fingers. "No doubt
it is the teeth. If the children do not get better soon, I think, were
I you, Hester, I should speak to Mr. Duffham."

The advice seemed to strike Hester Reed all of a heap. "Speak to Dr.
Duffham!" she exclaimed. "Why, ma'am, they must both be a good deal
worse than they be, afore we does that. I'll give 'em a dose o' mild
physic apiece. I dare say that'll bring 'em round."

"I should think it would not hurt them," assented Mrs. Todhetley. "They
both seem feverish; this one especially. I hear you have had Cathy
over," she went on, passing to another subject.

"Sure enough us have," said Mrs. Reed. "She come over yesterday was a
week and stayed till Friday night."

"And what is she doing now?"

"Well, ma'am, Cathy's keeping herself; and that's something. She has got
a place at Tewkesbury to serve in some shop; is quite in clover there,
by all accounts. Two good gownds she brought over to her back; and she's
pretty nigh as lighthearted as she was afore she went off to enter on
her first troubles."

"Hannah told me she was not looking well."

"She have had a nasty attack of--what was it?--neuralgy, I think she
called it, and been obliged to go to a doctor," answered Hester Reed.
"That's why they gave her the holiday. She was very well while she was
here."

I had stood at the door, talking to the little ones with their
watering-pot. As the mater was taking her final word with Mrs. Reed, I
went on to open the gate for her, when some woman whisked round the
corner from Piefinch Lane, and in at the gate.

"Thank ye, sir," said she to me: as if I had been holding it open for
her especial benefit.

It was Ann Dovey, the blacksmith's wife down Piefinch Cut: a smart young
woman, fond of fine gowns and caps. Mrs. Todhetley came away, and Ann
Dovey went in. And this is what passed at Reed's--as it leaked out to
the world afterwards.

The baby in the basket began to cry, and Ann Dovey lifted it out and
took it on her lap. She understood all about children, having been the
eldest of a numerous flock at home, and was no doubt all the fonder of
them because she had none of her own. Mrs. Dovey was moreover a great
gossip, liking to have as many fingers in her neighbours' pies as she
could conveniently get in.

"And now what's amiss with these two twins?" asked she in confidential
tones, bending her face forward till it nearly touched Mrs. Reed's, who
had sat down opposite to her with the other baby. "Sarah Tanken, passing
our shop just now, telled me they warn't the thing at all, so I thought
I'd run round."

"Sarah Tanken looked in while I was a-washing up after dinner, and saw
'em both," assented Mrs. Reed. "Hetty's the worst of the two; more peeky
like."

"Which _is_ Hetty?" demanded Ann Dovey; who, with all her neighbourly
visits, had not learnt to distinguish the two apart.

"The one that you be a-nursing."

"Did the mistress of the Manor look at 'em?"

"Yes; and she thinks I'd better give 'em both some mild physic.
Leastways, I said a dose might bring 'em round," added Hester Reed,
correcting herself, "and she said it might."

"It's the very thing for 'em, Hester Reed," pronounced Mrs. Dovey,
decisively. "There's nothing like a dose of physic for little ones; it
often stops a bout of illness. You give it to the two; and don't lose
no time. Grey powder's best."

"I've not got any grey powder by me," said Mrs. Reed. "It crossed my
mind to try 'em with one o' them pills I had from Abel Crew."

"What pills be they?"

"I had 'em from him for myself the beginning o' the year, when I was
getting the headache so much. They're as mild as mild can be; but they
did me good. The box is upstairs."

"How do you know they'd be the right pills to give to babies?" sensibly
questioned Mrs. Dovey.

"Oh, they be right enough for that! When little Georgy was poorly two or
three weeks back, I ran out to Abel Crew, chancing to see him go by the
gate, and asked whether one of his pills would do the child harm. He
said no, it would do him good."

"And did it get him round?"

"I never gave it. Georgy seemed to be so much pearter afore night came,
that I thought I'd wait till the morrow. He's a rare bad one to take
physic, he is. You may cover a powder in treacle that thick, Ann Dovey,
but the boy scents it out somehow, and can't be got to touch it. His
father always has to make him; I can't. He got well that time without
the pill."

"Well, I should try the pills on the little twins," advised Ann Dovey.
"I'm sure they want something o' the sort. Look at this one! lying
like a lamb in my arms, staring up at me with its poor eyes, and never
moving. You may always know when a child's ill by its quietness. Nothing
ailing 'em, they worry the life out of you."

"Both of them were cross enough this morning," remarked Hester Reed,
"and for that reason I know they be worse now. I'll try the pill
to-night."

Now, whether it was that Ann Dovey had any especial love for presiding
at the ceremony of administering pills to children, or whether she only
looked in again incidentally in passing, certain it was that in the
evening she was for the second time at George Reed's cottage. Mrs. Reed
had put the three elder ones to bed; or, as she expressed it, "got 'em
out o' the way;" and was undressing the twins by firelight, when Ann
Dovey tripped into the kitchen. George Reed was at work in the front
garden, digging; though it was getting almost too dark to see where he
inserted the spade.

"Have ye give 'em their physic yet?" was Mrs. Dovey's salutation.

"No; but I'm a-going to," answered Hester Reed. "You be just come in
time to hold 'em for me, Ann Dovey, while I go upstairs for the box."

Ann Dovey received the pair of babies, and sat down in the low chair.
Taking the candle, Mrs. Reed ran up to the room where the elder children
slept. The house was better furnished than cottages generally are, and
the rooms were of a fairly good size. Opposite the bed stood a high
deal press with a flat top to it, which Mrs. Reed made a shelf of, for
keeping things that must be out of the children's reach. Stepping on a
chair, she put her hand out for the box of pills, which stood in its
usual place near the corner, and went downstairs with it.

It was an ordinary pasteboard pill-box, containing a few pills--six or
seven, perhaps. Mrs. Dovey, curious in all matters, lifted the lid and
sniffed at the pills. Hester Reed was getting the moist sugar they were
to be administered in.

"What did you have these here pills for?" questioned Ann Dovey, as Mrs.
Reed came back with the sugar. "They bain't over big."

"For headache and pain in the side. I asked old Abel Crew if he could
give me something for it, and he gave me these pills."

Mrs. Reed was moistening a teaspoonful of the sugar, as she spoke, with
warm water. Taking out one of the pills she proceeded to crush it into
small bits, and then mixed it with the sugar. It formed a sort of paste.
Dose the first.

"That ain't moist enough, Hester Reed," pronounced Mrs. Dovey,
critically.

"No? I'll put a drop more warm water."

The water was added, and one of the children was fed with the delectable
compound--Hetty. Mrs. Dovey spoke again.

"Is it all for her? Won't a whole pill be too much for one, d'ye think?"

"Not a bit. When I asked old Abel whether one pill would be too much for
Georgy, he said, No--two wouldn't hurt him. I tell ye, Ann Dovey, the
pills be as mild as milk."

Hetty took in the whole dose by degrees. Susy had a similar one made
ready, and swallowed it in her turn. Then the two babies were conveyed
upstairs and put to bed side by side in their mother's room.

Mrs. Dovey, the ceremony being over, took her departure. George Reed
came in to his early supper, and soon afterwards he and his wife went
up to bed. Men who have to be up at five in the morning must go to rest
betimes. The fire and candle were put out, the doors locked, and the
cottage was steeped in quietness at a time when in larger houses the
evening was not much more than beginning.

How long she slept, Mrs. Reed could not tell. Whether it might be the
first part of the night, early or late, or whether morning might be
close upon the dawn, she knew not; but she was startled out of her
sleep by the cries of the babies. Awful cries, they seemed, coming from
children so young; and there could be no mistaking that each was in
terrible agony.

"Why, it's convulsions!" exclaimed George Reed, when he had lighted a
candle. "Both of them, too!"

Going downstairs as he was, he hastily lighted the kitchen fire and
put a kettle of water on. Then, dressing himself, he ran out for Mr.
Duffham. The doctor came in soon after George Reed had got back again.

Duffham was accustomed to scenes, and he entered on one now. Mrs. Reed,
in a state of distress, had put the babies in blankets and brought
them down to the kitchen fire; the three elder children, aroused
by the cries, had come down too, and were standing about in their
night-clothes, crying with fright. One of the babies was dead--Hetty.
She had just expired in her father's arms. The other was dying.

"What on earth have you been giving to these children?" exclaimed
Duffham, after taking a good look at the two.

"Oh, sir, what is it, please?" sobbed Mrs. Reed, in her terror.
"Convulsions?"

"Convulsions--no," said the doctor, in a fume. "It is something else, as
I believe--poison."

At which she set up a shriek that might have been heard out of doors.

"Well, Hetty was dead, I say;" and Duffham could not do anything to
save the other. It died whilst he stood there. Duffham repeated his
conjecture as to poison; and Mrs. Reed, all topsy-turvy though she was,
three-parts bereft of her senses, resented the implication almost
angrily.

"Poison!" cried she. "How can you think of such a thing, sir!"

"I tell you that to the best of my belief these children have both died
from some irritant poison," asserted Duffham, coolly imperative. "I ask
what you have been giving them?"

"They have not been well this three or four days past," replied she,
wandering from the point; not evasively, but in her mind's bewilderment.
"It must have been their teeth, sir; I thought they were cutting 'em
with fever."

"Did you give them any physic?"

"Yes, sir. A pill apiece when I put 'em to bed."

"Ah!" said Mr. Duffham. "What pill was it?"

"One of Abel Crew's."

This answer surprised him. Allowing that his suspicion of poison was
correct, he assumed that these pills must have contained it; and he had
never had cause to suppose that Abel Crew's pills were otherwise than
innocent.

Mrs. Reed, her voice broken by sobs, explained further in answer to his
questions, telling him how she had procured these pills from Abel Crew
some time before, and had given one of the said pills to each of the
babies. Duffham stood against the dresser, taking it all in with a
solemn face, his cane held up to his chin.

"Let me see this box of pills, Mrs. Reed."

She went upstairs to get it. A tidy woman in her ways, she had put the
box in its place again on the top of the press. Duffham took off the
lid, and examined the pills.

"Do you happen to have a bit of sealing-wax in the house, Reed?" he
asked presently.

George Reed, who had stood like a man bewildered, looking first on one,
then on the other of his dead little ones, answered that he had not. But
the eldest child, Annie, spoke up, saying that there was a piece in her
little work-box; Cathy had given it her last week when she was at home.

It was produced--part of a small stick of fancy wax, green and gold.
Duffham wrapped the pill-box up in the back of a letter that he took
from his pocket, and sealed it with a seal that hung to his watch-chain.
He put the parcel into the hand of George Reed.

"Take care of it," he said. "This will be wanted."

"There could not have been poison in them pills, sir," burst out Mrs.
Reed, her distress increasing at the possibility that he might be right.
"If there had been, they'd ha' poisoned me. One night I took three of
'em."

Duffham did not answer. He was nodding his head in answer to his own
thoughts.

"And who ever heard of Abel Crew mixing up poison in his pills?" went on
Mrs. Reed. "If you please, sir, I don't think he could do it."

"Well, that part of it puzzles me--how he came to do it," acknowledged
Duffham. "I like old Abel, and shall be sorry if it is proved that his
pills have done the mischief."

Mrs. Reed shook her head. She had more faith than that in Abel Crew.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Ever so many years before--for it was in the time of Sir Peter
Chavasse--there appeared one day a wanderer at Church Dykely. It was hot
weather, and he seemed to think nothing of camping out in the fields by
night, under the summer stars. Who he was, or what he was, or why he had
come, or why he stayed, nobody knew. He was evidently not a tramp, or a
gipsy, or a travelling tinker--quite superior to it all; a slender,
young, and silent man, with a pale and gentle face.

At one corner of the common, spreading itself between the village and
Chavasse Grange, there stood a covered wooden shed, formerly used to
impound stray cattle, but left to itself since the square space for
the new pound had been railed round. By-and-by it was found that the
wanderer had taken to this shed to sleep in. Next, his name leaked
out--"Abel Crew."

He lived how he could, and as simply as a hermit. Buying a penny loaf
at the baker's, and making his dinner of it with a handful of sorrel
plucked from the fields, and a drink from the rivulet that ran through
the wilderness outside the Chavasse grounds. His days were spent in
examining roots and wild herbs, now and then in digging one up; and his
nights chiefly in studying the stars. Sir Peter struck up a sort of
speaking acquaintanceship with him, and, it was said, was surprised
at his stock of knowledge and the extent of his travels; for he knew
personally many foreign places where even Sir Peter himself had never
been. That may have caused Sir Peter--who was lord of the manor and of
the common included--to tolerate in him what it was supposed he would
not in others. Anyway, when Abel Crew began to dig the ground about his
shed, and plant roots and herbs in it, Sir Peter let him do it and never
interfered. It was quite the opposite; for Sir Peter would sometimes
stand to watch him at his work, talking the while.

In the course of time there was quite an extensive garden round the
shed--comparatively speaking, you know, for we do not expect to see a
shed garden as large as that of a mansion. It was fenced in with a hedge
and wooden palings, all the work of Abel Crew's hands. Sir Peter was
dead then; but Lady Chavasse, guardian to the young heir, Sir Geoffrey,
extended to him the same favour that her husband had, and, if she did
not absolutely sanction what he was doing, she at any rate did not
oppose it. Abel Crew filled his garden with rare and choice and useful
field herbs, the valuable properties of which he alone understood;
and of ordinary sweet flowers, such as bees love to suck. He set up
bee-hives and sold the honey; he distilled lavender and bergamot for
perfumes; he converted his herbs and roots into medicines, which he
supplied to the poor people around, charging so small a price for them
that it could scarcely more than cover the cost of making, and not
charging at all the very poor. At the end of about ten years from
his first appearance, he took down the old shed, and built up a more
convenient cottage in its place, doing it all with his own pair of
hands. And the years went on and on, and Abel Crew and his cottage, and
his herbs, and his flowers, and his bees, and his medicines, were just
as much of an institution in the parish as was the Grange itself.

He and I became good friends. I liked him. You have heard how I take
likes and dislikes to faces, and I rarely saw a face that I liked as I
liked Abel Crew's. Not for its beauty, though it really was beautiful,
with its perfect shape and delicately carved features; but for its
unmistakable look of goodness and its innate refinement: perhaps also
for the deep, far-seeing, and often _sad_ expression that sat in the
earnest eyes. He was old now--sixty, I dare say; tall, slender, and very
upright still; his white hair brushed back from his forehead and worn
rather long. What his original condition of life might have been did not
transpire; he never talked of it. More than once I had seen him reading
Latin books; and though he fell into the diction of the country people
around when talking with them, he changed his tones and language when
conversing with his betters. A character, no doubt, he was, but a man to
be respected; a man of religion, too--attending church regularly twice
on a Sunday, wet or dry, and carrying his religion into the little
things of everyday life.

His style of dress was old-fashioned and peculiar. So far as I saw, it
never varied. A stout coat, waistcoat, and breeches every day, all of
one colour--drab; with leathern gaiters buttoned nearly to the knee. On
Sundays he wore a suit of black silk velvet, and a frilled shirt of fine
cambric. His breeches were tied at the knee with black ribbon, in which
was a plain, glistening steel buckle; buckles to match shone in his
shoes. His stockings were black, and in the winter he wore black-cloth
gaiters. In short, on Sundays Abel Crew looked like a fine old-fashioned
English gentleman, and would have been taken for one. The woman who got
up his linen declared he was more particular over his shirt-frills than
Sir Peter himself.

Strangers in the place would sometimes ask what he was. The answer was
not easy to give. He was a botanist and herbalist, and made pills, and
mixtures, and perfumes, and sold honey, and had built his cottage and
planted out his garden, and lived alone, cooking his food and waiting
on himself; doing all in fact with his own hands, and was very modest
always. On the other side, he had travelled in his youth, he understood
paintings, studied the stars, read his store of Latin and classical
books, and now and then bought more, and was as good a doctor as Duffham
himself. Some people said a better one. Certain it was, that more than
once when legitimate medical nostrums had failed--calomel and blisters
and bleeding--Abel Crew's simple decoctions and leaves had worked a
cure. Look at young Mrs. Sterling at the Court. When that first baby of
hers came to town--and a fine squalling young brat he was, with a mouth
like a crocodile's!--gatherings arose in her chest or somewhere, one
after another; it was said the agony was awful. Duffham's skill seemed
to have gone a blackberrying, the other doctor's also, for neither of
the two could do anything for her, and the Court thought she would have
died of it. Upon that, some relation of old Sterling's was summoned from
London--a great physician in great practice. He came in answer, and was
liberal with his advice, telling them to try this and to try the other.
But it did no good; and she only grew worse. When they were all in
despair, seeing her increasing weakness and the prolonged pain, the
woman who nursed her spoke of old Abel Crew; she had known him cure in
these cases when the doctor could not; and the poor young lady, willing
to catch at a straw, told them to send for Abel Crew. Abel Crew took
a prepared plaster of herbs with him, green leaves of some sort, and
applied it. That night the patient slept more easily than she had for
weeks; and in a short time was well again.

But, skilful though he seemed to be in the science of herbs, as remedies
for sickness and sores, Abel Crew never obtruded himself upon the
ailing, or took money for his advice, or willingly interfered with
the province of Duffham; he never would do it unless compelled in the
interests of humanity. The patients he chiefly treated were the poor,
those who could not have paid Duffham a coin worth thinking about.
Duffham knew this. And, instead of being jealous of him, as some medical
men might have been, or ridiculing him for a quack, Duffham liked and
respected old Abel Crew. He was simple in his habits still: living
chiefly upon bread and butter, with radishes or mustard and cress for
a relish, cooking vegetables for his dinner, but rarely meat: and his
drink was tea or spring water.

So that Abel Crew was rather a notable character amongst us; and when it
was known abroad that two of his pills had caused the death of Mrs.
Reed's twins, there arose no end of a commotion.

It chanced that the same night this occurred, just about the time in
fact that the unfortunate infants were taking down the pills under the
superintendence of their mother and the blacksmith's wife, Abel Crew met
with an accident; though it was curious enough that it should be so. In
taking a pan of boiling herbs off the fire, he let one of the handles
slip out of his fingers; it sent the pan down on that side, spilled a
lot of the stuff, and scalded his left foot on the instep. Therefore he
was about the last person to hear of the calamity; for his door was not
open as usual the following morning, and no one knocked to tell him of
it.

Duffham was the first. Passing by on his morning rounds, the doctor
heard the comments of the people, and it arrested him. It was so unusual
a thing for Abel Crew not to be about, and for his door to be closed,
that some of them had been arriving at a sensible conclusion--Abel Crew,
knowing the mischief his pills had done, was shutting himself up within
the house, unable to face his neighbours.

"Rubbish!" said Duffham. And he strode up the garden-path, knocked at
the door with his cane, and entered. Abel had dressed, but was lying
down on the bed again to rest his lame foot.

Duffham would have asked to look at it, but that he knew Abel Crew was
as good at burns and scalds as he himself was. It had been doctored at
once, and was now wrapped up in a handkerchief.

"The fire is nearly out of it," said Abel, "but it must have rest; by
to-night I shall be able to dress it with my healing-salve. I am much
obliged to you for coming in, sir: though in truth I don't know how you
could have heard of the accident."

"Ah! news flies," said Duffham, evasively, knowing that he had not heard
of the foot, or the neighbours either, and had come in for something
altogether different. "What is this about the pills?"

"About the pills?" repeated Abel Crew, who had got up out of respect,
and was putting on his coat. "What pills, sir?"

The doctor told him what had happened. Hester Reed had given one of his
pills to each of her babies, and both had died of it. Abel Crew listened
quietly; his face and his eyes fixed on Duffham.

"The children cannot have died of the pills," said he, speaking as
gently as you please. "Something else must have killed them."

"According to Hester Reed's account, nothing can have done it but the
pills," said Duffham. "The children had only taken their ordinary food
throughout the day, and very little of that. George Reed came running to
me in the night, but it was too late; one was dead before I got there.
There could be no mistaking the children's symptoms--that both were
poisoned."

"This is very strange," exclaimed Abel, looking troubled. "By what kind
of poison?"

"Arsenic, I think. I----"

But here they were interrupted. Dovey, the blacksmith, hearing of the
calamity, together with the fact that it was his wife who had assisted
in administering the suspected doses, deemed it his duty to look into
the affair a little, and to resent it. He had left his forge and a bar
of iron red-hot in it, and come tearing along in his leather apron, his
shirt-sleeves stripped up to the elbow, and his arms grimy. A dark-eyed,
good-natured little man in general, was Dovey, but exploding with rage
at the present moment.

"Now then, Abel Crew, what do you mean by selling pills to poison
people?" demanded he, pushing back the door with a bang, and stepping
in fiercely. Duffham, foreseeing there was going to be a contest, and
having no time to waste, took his departure.

"I have not sold pills to poison people," replied Abel.

"Look here," said Dovey, folding his black arms. "Be you going to eat
them pills, or be you not? Come!"

"What do you mean, Dovey?"

"What do I mean! Ain't my meaning plain? Do you own to having selled a
box of pills to Hester Reed last winter?--be you thinking to eat that
there fact, and deny of it? Come, Abel Crew!"

"I remember it well," readily spoke up Abel. "Mrs. Reed came here one
day, complaining that her head ached continually, and her side often had
a dull pain in it, and asked me to give her something. I did so; I gave
her a box of pills. It was early in January, I think. I know there was
ice on the ground."

"Then do you own to them pills," returned Dovey, more quietly, his
fierceness subdued by Abel's civility. "It were you that furnished 'em?"

"I furnished the box of pills I speak of, that Hester Reed had from me
in the winter. There's no mistake about that."

"And made 'em too?"

"Yes, and made them."

"Well, I'm glad to hear you say that; and now don't you go for to eat
your words later, Abel Crew. Our Ann, my wife, helped to give them there
two pills to the children; and I'm not a-going to let her get into
trouble over it. You've confessed to the pills, and I'm a witness."

"My pills did not kill the children, Dovey," said Abel, in a pleasant
tone, resting his lame foot upon an opposite chair.

"Not kill 'em?"

"No, that they did not. I've not made pills all these years to poison
children at last."

"But what done it if the pills didn't?"

"How can I say? 'Twasn't my pills."

"Dr. Duffham says it was the pills. And he----"

"Dr. Duffham says it was?"

"Reed telled me that the doctor asked outright, all in a flurry, what
his wife had gave the babies, and she said she had gave 'em nothing but
them there two pills of Abel Crew's. Duffham said the pills must have
had poison in 'em, and he asked for the box; and Hester Reed, she give
him the box, and he sealed it up afore their eyes with his own seal."

Abel nodded. He knew that any suspected medicine must in such a case be
sealed up.

"And now that I've got that there word from ye, I'll say good-day to
ye, neighbour, for I've left my forge to itself, and some red-hot iron
in it. And I hope with all my heart and mind,"--the blacksmith turned
round from the door to say more kindly, his good-nature cropping up
again,--"that it'll turn out it _warn't_ the pills, but some'at else:
our Ann won't have no cause to be in a fright then." Which was as much
as to say that Ann Dovey was frightened, you observe.

That same afternoon, going past the common, I saw Abel Crew in his
garden, sitting against the cottage wall in the sun, his foot resting on
a block of wood.

"How did it all happen, Abel?" I asked, turning in at the gate. "Did you
give Mrs. Reed the wrong pills?"

"No, sir," he answered, "I gave her the right pills; the pills I make
expressly for such complaints as hers. But if I had, in one sense, given
her the wrong, they could not have brought about any ill effect such as
this, for my pills are all innocent of poison."

"I should say it could not have been the pills that did the mischief,
after all, then."

"You might swear it as well, Master Johnny, with perfect safety. What
killed the poor children, I don't pretend to know, but my pills never
did. I tried to get down as far as Reed's to inquire particulars, and
found I could not walk. It was a bit of ill-luck, disabling myself just
at this time."

"Shall you have to appear at the inquest to-morrow?"

He lifted his head quickly at the question--as though it surprised him.
Perhaps not having cast his thoughts that way.

"Is there to be an inquest, Master Johnny?"

"I heard so from old Jones. He has gone over to see the coroner."

"Well, I wish the investigation was all over and done with," said he.
"It makes me uneasy, though I know I am innocent."

Looking at him sitting there in the sun, at his beautiful face with its
truthful eyes and its silver hair, it was next to impossible to believe
he could be the author of the two children's death. Only--the best of us
are liable to mistakes, and sometimes make them. I said as much.

"_I_ made none, Master Johnny," was his answer. "When my pills come to
be analyzed--as of course they must be--they will be found wholesome and
innocent."

                 *       *       *       *       *

The inquest did not take place till the Friday. Old Jones had fixed it
for the Thursday, but the coroner put it off to the next day. And by the
time Friday morning dawned, opinion had veered round, and was strongly
in favour of Abel Crew. All the parish had been to see him; and his
protestations, that he had never in his life put any kind of poison into
his medicines, made a great impression. The pills could not have been in
fault, said everybody. Dr. Duffham might have sealed them up as a matter
of precaution, but the mischief would not be found there.

In the middle of Church Dykely, next door to Perkins the butcher's,
stood the Silver Bear Inn; a better sort of public-house, kept by Henry
Rimmer. It was there that the inquest was held. Henry Rimmer himself and
Perkins the butcher were two of the jurymen. Dobbs the blacksmith was
another. They all dressed themselves in their Sunday-going clothes to
attend it. It was called for two in the afternoon; and soon after that
hour the county coroner (who had dashed up to the Silver Bear in a fast
gig, his clerk driving) and the jury trooped down to George Reed's
cottage and took a look at the two pale little faces lying there side by
side. Then they went back again, and the proceedings began.

Of course as many spectators went crowding into the room as it would
hold. Three or four chairs were there (besides those occupied by the
jury at the table), and a bench stood against the wall. The bench was
speedily fought for and filled; but Henry Rimmer's brother, constituting
himself master of the ceremonies, reserved the chairs for what he called
the "big people," meaning those of importance in the place. The Squire
was bowed into one; and to my surprise I had another. Why, I could not
imagine, unless it was that they remembered I was the owner of George
Reed's cottage. But I did not like to sit down when so many older
persons were standing, and I would not take the chair.

Some little time was occupied with preliminaries before what might be
called the actual inquest set in. First of all, the coroner flew into a
passion because Abel Crew had not put in an appearance, asking old Jones
if he supposed that was the way justice must be administered in England,
and that he ought to have had Crew present. Old Jones who was in a
regular fluster with it all, and his legs more gouty than ever, told the
coroner, calling him "his worship," that he had understood Crew meant to
be present. Upon which the coroner sharply answered that "understanding"
went for nothing, and Jones should know his business better.

However, in walked Abel Crew in the midst of the contest. His delayed
arrival was caused by his difficulty in getting his damaged foot there;
which had been accomplished by the help of a stick and somebody's arm.
Abel had dressed himself in his black velvet suit; and as he took off
his hat on entering and bowed respectfully to the coroner, I declare he
could not be taken for anything but a courtly gentleman of the old
school. Nobody offered him a chair. I wished I had not given up mine: he
should have had it.

Evidence was first tendered of the death of the children, and of the
terrible pain they had died in. Duffham and a medical man, who was a
stranger and had helped at the post-mortem, testified to arsenic being
the cause of death. The next question was, how had it been administered?
A rumour arose in the room that the pills had been analyzed; but the
result had not transpired. Every one could see a small paper parcel
standing on the table before the coroner, and knew by its shape that it
must contain the pill-box.

Hester Reed was called. She said (giving her evidence very quietly, just
a sob and a sigh every now and then alone betraying what she felt) that
she was the wife of George Reed. Her two little ones--twins, aged eleven
months and a half--had been ailing for a day or two, seemed feverish,
would not eat their food, were very cross at times and unnaturally still
at others, and she came to the conclusion that their teeth must be
plaguing them, and thought she would give them some mild physic. Mrs.
Todhetley, the Squire's lady at Dyke Manor, had called in on the Tuesday
afternoon, and agreed with her that some mild physic----

"Confine your statement to what is evidence," interrupted the coroner,
sternly.

Hester Reed, looking scared at the check, and perhaps not knowing what
was evidence and what not, went on the best way she could. She and Ann
Dovey--who had been neighbourly enough to look in and help her--had
given the children a pill apiece in the evening after they were
undressed, mashing the pill up in a little sugar and warm water. She
then put them to bed upstairs and went to bed herself not long after. In
the night she and her husband were awoke by the babies' screams, and
they thought it must be convulsions. Her husband lighted the fire and
ran for Dr. Duffham; but one had died before the doctor could get there,
and the other died close upon it.

"What food had you given them during the day?" asked the coroner.

"Very little indeed, sir. They wouldn't take it."

"What did the little that they did take consist of?"

"It were soaked bread, sir, with milk and some sprinkled sugar. I tried
them with some potato mashed up in a spoonful o' broth at midday--we'd
had a bit o' biled neck o' mutton for dinner--but they both turned from
it."

"Then all they took that day was bread soaked in milk and sweetened with
sugar?"

"Yes, it were, sir. But the bread was soaked in warm water and the milk
and sugar was put in afterwards. 'Twas but the veriest morsel they'd
take, poor little dears!"

"Was the bread--and the milk--and the sugar, the same that the rest of
your household used?"

"In course it were, sir. My other children ate plenty of it. _Their_
appetites didn't fail 'em."

"Where did you get the warm water from that you say you soaked the bread
in?"

"Out o' the tea-kettle, sir. The water was the same that I biled for our
tea morning and night."

"The deceased children, then, had absolutely no food given to them apart
from what you had yourselves?"

"Not a scrap, sir. Not a drop."

"Except the pills."

"Excepting them, in course, sir. None o' the rest of us wanted physic."

"Where did you procure these pills?"

She went into the history of the pills. Giving the full account of them,
as already related.

"By your own showing, witness, it must be three months, or thereabouts,
since you had that box from Abel Crew," spoke the coroner. "How do you
know that the two pills you administered to the deceased children came
from the same box?"

Hester Reed's eyes opened wide. She looked as surprised as though she
had been asked whether she had procured the two pills from the moon.

"Yes, yes," interposed one of the jury, "how do you know it was the same
box?"

"Why, gentlemen, I had no other box of pills at all, save that," she
said, when her speech came to her. "We've had no physic but that in the
cottage since winter, nor for ever so long afore. I'll swear it was the
same box, sirs; there can't be no mistake about it."

"Did you leave it about in the way of people?" resumed the coroner. "So
that it might be handled by anybody who might come into your cottage?"

"No, sir," she answered, earnestly. "I never kept the pill-box but in
one place, and that was on the top of the high press upstairs out of
harm's way. I put it there the first night Abel Crew gave it me, and
when I wanted to get a pill or two out for my own taking, I used to step
on a chair--for it's too high for me to reach without--and help myself.
The box have never been took from the place at all, sir, till Tuesday
night, when I brought it downstairs with me. When I've wanted to dust
the press-top, I've just lifted the pill-box with one hand and passed
the duster along under it with the other, as I stood on the chair. It's
the same box, sir; I'll swear to that much; and it's the same pills."

Strong testimony. The coroner paused a moment. "You swear that, you say?
You are quite sure?"

"Sir, I am sure and positive. The box was never took from its place
since Abel Crew gave it me, till I reached up for it on Tuesday evening
and carried it downstairs."

"You had been in the habit of taking these pills yourself, you say?"

"I took two three or four times when I first had 'em, sir; once I took
three; but since then I've felt better and not wanted any."

"Did you feel any inconvenience from them? Any pain?"

"Not a bit, sir. As I said to Ann Dovey that night, when she asked
whether they was fit pills to give the children, they seemed as mild as
milk."

"Should you know the box again, witness?"

"Law yes, sir, what should hinder me?" returned Hester Reed, inwardly
marvelling at what seemed so superfluous a question.

The coroner undid the paper, and handed the box to her. She was standing
close to him, on the other side his clerk--who sat writing down the
evidence. "Is this the box?" he asked. "Look at it well."

Mrs. Reed did as she was bid: turned it about and looked "well." "Yes,
sir, it is the same box," said she. "That is, I am nearly sure of it."

"What do you mean by _nearly_ sure?" quickly asked the coroner, catching
at the word. "Have you any doubt?"

"Not no moral doubt at all, sir. Only them pill-boxes is all so like one
another. Yes, sir, I'm sure it is the same box."

"Open it, and look at the pills. Are they, in your judgment, the same?"

"Just the same, sir," she answered, after taking off the lid. "One might
a'most know'em anywhere. Only----"

"Only what?" demanded the coroner, as she paused.

"Well, sir, I fancied I had rather more left--six or seven say. There's
only five here."

The coroner made no answer to that. He took the box from her and put on
the lid. We soon learnt that two had been taken out for the purpose of
being analyzed.

For who should loom into the room at that juncture but Pettipher, the
druggist from Piefinch Cut. He had been analyzing the pills in a hasty
way in obedience to orders received half-an-hour ago, and came to give
the result. The pills contained arsenic, he said; not enough to kill a
grown person, he thought, but enough to kill a child. As Pettipher was
only a small man (in a business point of view) and sold groceries as
well as drugs, and spectacles and ear-trumpets, some of us did not think
much of his opinion, and fancied the pills should have been analyzed by
Duffham. That was just like old Jones: giving work to the wrong man.

George Reed was questioned, but could tell nothing, except that he had
never touched either box or pills. While Ann Dovey was being called, and
the coroner had his head bent over his clerk's notes, speaking to him in
an undertone, Abel Crew suddenly asked to be allowed to look at the
pills. The coroner, without lifting his head, just pushed the box down
on the green cloth; and one of the jury handed it over his shoulder to
Abel Crew.

"This is not the box I gave Mrs. Reed," said Abel, in a clear, firm
tone, after diving into it with his eyes and nose. "Nor are these the
pills."

Up went the coroner's head with a start. He had supposed the request to
see the box came from a juryman. It might have been irregular for Abel
Crew to be allowed so much; but as it arose partly through the coroner's
own fault, he was too wise to make a commotion over it.

"What is that you say?" he asked, stretching out his hand for the box as
eagerly as though it had contained gold.

"That this box and these pills are not the same that I furnished to Mrs.
Reed, sir," replied Abel, advancing and placing the box in the coroner's
hand. "They are not indeed."

"Not the same pills and box!" exclaimed the coroner. "Why, man, you have
heard the evidence of the witness, Hester Reed; you may see for yourself
that she spoke nothing but truth. Don't talk nonsense here."

"But they are _not_ the same, sir," respectfully persisted Abel. "I know
my own pills, and I know my own boxes: these are neither the one nor the
other."

"Now that won't do; you must take us all for fools!" exploded the
coroner, who was a man of quick temper. "Just you stand back and be
quiet."

"Never a pill-box went out from my hands, sir, but it had my little
private mark upon it," urged Abel. "That box does not bear the mark."

"What is the mark, pray?" asked the coroner.

"Four little dots of ink inside the rim of the lid, sir; and four
similar dots inside the box near the edge. They are so faint that a
casual observer might not notice them; but they are always there. Of all
the pill-boxes now in my house, sir--and I suppose there may be two or
three dozen of them--you will not find one but has the mark."

Some whispering had been going on in different parts of the room; but
this silenced it. You might have heard a pin drop. The words seemed to
make an impression on the coroner: they and Abel Crew were both so
earnest.

"You assert also that the pills are not yours," spoke the coroner,
who was known to be fond of desultory conversations while holding his
inquests. "What proof have you of that?"

"No proof; that is, no proof that I can advance, that would satisfy the
eye or ear. But I am certain, by the look of them, that those were never
my pills."

All this took the jury aback; the coroner also. It had seemed to some of
them an odd thing that Hester Reed should have swallowed two or three of
the pills at once without their entailing an ache or a pain, and that
one each had poisoned the babies. Perkins the butcher observed to the
coroner that the box must have been changed since Mrs. Reed helped
herself from it. Upon which the coroner, after pulling at his whiskers
for a moment as if in thought, called out for Mrs. Reed to return.

But when she did so, and was further questioned, she only kept to what
she had said before, strenuously denying that the box _could_ have been
changed. It had never been touched by any hands but her own while it
stood in its place on the press, and had never been removed from it at
all until she took it downstairs on the past Tuesday night.

"Is the room where this press stands your own sleeping-room?" asked the
coroner.

"No, sir. It's the other room, where my three children sleep."

"Could these children get to the box?"

"Dear no, sir! 'Twould be quite impossible."

"Had any one an opportunity of handling the box when you took it down
on Tuesday night?" went on the coroner after a pause.

"Only Mrs. Dovey, sir. Nobody else was there."

"Did she touch it?"

"She laid hold of it to look at the pills."

"Did you leave her _alone_ with it?"

"No, sir. Leastways--yes, I did for a minute or so, while I went into
the back'us to get the sugar and a saucer and spoon."

"Had she the box in her hands when you returned?"

"Yes, sir, I think she had. I think she was still smelling at the pills.
I know the poor little innocents was lying one on one knee, and one on
t'other, all flat, and her two hands was lifted with the box in 'em."

"It was after that that you took the pills out of it to give the
children?"

"Yes, sir; directly after. But Ann Dovey wouldn't do nothing wrong to
the pills, sir."

"That will do," said the coroner in his curt way. "Call Ann Dovey."

Ann Dovey walked forward with a face as red as her new bonnet-strings.
She had heard the whole colloquy: something seemed, too, to have put her
out. Possessing scant veneration for coroners at the best of times, and
none for the jury at present assembled, she did not feel disposed to
keep down her temper.

The few first questions asked her, however, afforded no opportunity
for resentment, for they were put quietly, and tended only to extract
confirmation of Mrs. Reed's evidence, as to fetching the pill-box from
upstairs and administering the pills. Then the coroner cleared his
throat.

"Did you see the last witness, Hester Reed, go into the back kitchen for
a spoon and saucer?"

"I saw her go and fetch 'em from somewhere," replied Ann Dovey, who felt
instinctively the ball was beginning, and gave the reins to her temper
accordingly.

"Did you take charge of the pill-box while she was gone?"

"I had it in my hand, if you mean that."

"Did anybody come into the kitchen during that interval?"

"No they didn't," was the tart response.

"You were alone, except for the two infants?"

"I were. What of it?"

"Now, witness, did you do anything with that box? Did you, for instance,
exchange it for another?"

"I think you ought to be ashamed o' yourselves, all on you, to sit and
ask a body such a thing!" exploded Mrs. Dovey, growing every moment more
resentful, at being questioned. "If I had knowed the bother that was to
spring up, I'd have chucked the box, pills and all, into the fire first.
I wish I had!"

"Was the box, that you handed to Hester Reed on her return, the same box
she left with you? Were the pills the same pills?"

"Why, where d'ye think I could have got another box from?" shrieked Ann
Dovey. "D'you suppose, sir, I carry boxes and pills about with me? I
bain't so fond o' physic as all that comes to."

"Dovey takes pills on occasion for that giddiness of his; I've seen
him take 'em; mayhap you'd picked up a box of his," spoke Dobbs the
blacksmith, mildly.

That was adding fuel to fire. Two of a trade don't agree. Dovey and
Dobbs were both blacksmiths: the one in Church Dykely; the other in
Piefinch Cut, not much more, so to say, than a stone's-throw from each
other. The men were good friends enough; but their respective ladies
were apt to regard jealously all work taken to the rival establishment.
Any other of the jurymen might have made the remark with comparative
impunity; not so Dobbs. And, besides the turn the inquiry seemed to be
taking, Mrs. Dovey had not been easy about it in her mind from the
first; proof of which was furnished by the call, already mentioned,
made by her husband on Abel Crew.

"Dovey takes pills on occasion, do he!" she shrilly retorted. "And what
do you take, Bill Dobbs? Pints o' beer when you can get 'em. Who lamed
Poole's white horse the t'other day a-shoeing him?"

"Silence!" sternly interrupted the coroner. While Dobbs, conscious of
the self-importance imparted to him by the post he was now filling, and
of the necessity of maintaining the dignity of demeanour which he was
apt to put on with his best clothes, bore the aspersion with equanimity
and a stolid face.

"Attend to me, witness, and confine yourself to replying to the
questions I put to you," continued the coroner. "Did you take with you
any pills or pill-box of your own when you went to Mrs. Reed's that
evening?"

"No, I _didn't_," returned Ann Dovey, the emphasis culminating in a sob:
and why she should have set on to shiver and shake was more than the
jury could understand.

"Do you wear pockets?"

"What if I do?" she said, after a momentary pause. But her lips grew
white, and I thought she was trying to brave it out.

"Had you a pocket on that evening?"

"Heaven be good to me!" I heard her mutter under her breath. And if ever
I saw a woman look frightened nearly to death, Ann Dovey looked it then.

"Had you a pocket on that evening, witness?" repeated the coroner,
sharply.

"Y--es."

"What articles were in it? Do you recollect?"

"It were a key or two," came the answer at length, her very teeth
chattering and all the impudence suddenly gone out of her. "And my
thimble, sir;--and some coppers; and a part of a nutmeg;--and--and I
don't remember nothing else, sir."

"No box of pills? You are sure you had not that?"

"Haven't I said so, sir?" she rejoined, bursting into a flood of tears.
For which, and for the sudden agitation, nobody could see any reason:
and perhaps it was only that which made the coroner harp upon the same
string. Her demeanour had become suspicious.

"You had no poison of any kind in your pocket, then?"

But he asked the question in jest more than earnest. For when she went
into hysterics instead of replying, he let her go. He was used to seeing
witnesses scared when brought before him.

The verdict was not arrived at that day. When other witnesses had
been examined, the coroner addressed the jury. Ten of them listened
deferentially, and were quite prepared to return a verdict of
Manslaughter against Abel Crew; seemed red-hot to do it, in fact. But
two of them dissented. They were not satisfied, they said; and they held
out for adjourning the inquest to see if any more light could be thrown
upon the affair. As they evidently had the room with them, the coroner
yielded, and adjourned the inquest in a temper.

And then it was discovered that the name was not Crew but Carew. Abel
himself corrected the coroner. Upon that, the coroner sharply demanded
why he had lived under a false name.

"Nay, sir," replied Abel, as dignified as you please, "I have had no
intention of doing so. When I first came to this neighbourhood I gave my
name correctly--Carew: but the people at once converted it into Crew by
their mode of pronunciation."

"At any rate, you must have sanctioned it."

"Tacitly I have done so. What did it signify? When I have had occasion
to write my name--but that has been very rare--I have written it Carew.
Old Sir Peter Chavasse knew it was Carew, and used to call me so; as did
Sir Geoffry. Indeed, sir, I have had no reason to conceal my name."

"That's enough," said the coroner, cutting him short. "Stand back, Abel
Carew. The proceedings are adjourned to this day week."




IV.

ABEL CREW.


Things are done in remote country places that would not be done in
towns. Whether the law is understood by us, or whether it is not, it
often happens that it is very much exceeded, or otherwise not acted
upon. Those who have to exercise it sometimes show themselves as
ignorant of it as if they had lived all their lives in the wilds of
America.

Old Jones the constable was one of these. When not checked by his
masters, the magistrates, he would do most outrageous things--speaking
of the law and of common sense. And he did one in reference to Abel
Crew. I still say Crew. Though it had come out that his name was Carew,
we should be sure to call him Crew to the end.

The inquest might have been concluded at its first sitting, but
for the two who stood out against the rest of the jury. Perkins the
butcher and Dobbs the blacksmith. Truth to say, these two had plenty
of intelligence; which could not be said of all the rest. Ten of the
jury pronounced the case to be as clear as daylight: the infants had
been poisoned by Abel Crew's pills: and the coroner seemed to agree
with them--he hated trouble. But Dobbs and Perkins held out. They were
not satisfied, they said; the pills furnished by Abel Crew might not
have been the pills that were taken by the children; moreover, they
considered that the pills should be "more officially" analyzed.
Pettipher the druggist was all very well in his small way, but hardly
up, in their opinion, to pronouncing upon pills when a man's life or
liberty was at stake. They pressed for an adjournment, that the pills
might be examined by some competent authority. The coroner, as good as
telling them they were fools to their faces, had adjourned the inquest
in suppressed passion to that day week.

"And I've got to take care of you, Abel Crew," said old Jones,
floundering up on his gouty legs to Abel as the jury and crowd
dispersed. "You've got to come along o' me."

"To come where?" asked Abel, who was hobbling towards home on his
scalded foot, by the help of his stick and the arm of Gibbon the
gamekeeper.

"To the lock-up," said old Jones.

"To the lock-up!" echoed Abel Crew.

"In course," returned old Jones. "Where else but the lock-up? Did you
think it was to the pound?"

Abel Crew, lifting the hand that held his stick to brush a speck of dirt
off his handsome velvet coat, turned to the constable; his refined face,
a little paler than usual, gazing inquiringly at old Jones's, his silver
hair glistening in the setting sun.

"I don't understand you, Mr. Jones," he said calmly. "You cannot mean to
lock me up?"

"Well, I never!" cried old Jones, who had a knack of considering every
suspected person guilty, and treating them accordingly. "You have a
cheek, you have, Abel Crew! 'Not going to take me to the lock-up, Mr.
Jones,' says you! Where would you be took to?"

"But there's no necessity for it," said Abel. "I shall not run away. I
shall be in my house if I'm wanted again."

"I dare say you would!" said old Jones, ironically. "You might or you
mightn't, you know. You be as good as committed for the killing and
slaying o' them there two twins, and it's my business to see as you
_don't_ make your escape aforehand, Abel Crew."

Quite a company of us, sauntering out of the inquest-room, were
listening by this time. I gave old Jones a bit of my mind.

"He is not yet committed, Jones, therefore you have no right to take him
or to lock him up."

"You don't know nothing about it, Mr. Ludlow. I do. The crowner gave me
a hint, and I'm acting on it. 'Don't you go and let that man escape,'
says his worship to me: 'it'll be at your peril if you do.' '_I'll_ see
to him, your worship,' says I. And I be a-doing of it."

But it was hardly likely that the coroner meant Abel Crew to be confined
in that precious lock-up for a whole week. One night there was bad
enough. At least, I did not think he meant it; but the crowd, to judge
by their comments, seemed divided on the point.

"The shortest way to settle the question will be to ask the coroner,
old Jones," said I, turning back to the Silver Bear. "Come along."

"You'd be clever to catch him, Master Johnny," roared out old Jones
after me. "His worship jumped into his gig; it was a-waiting for him
when he come out; and his clerk druv him off at a slapping pace."

It was true. The coroner was gone; and old Jones had it all his own
way; for, you see, none of us liked to interfere with the edict of an
official gentleman who held sway in the county and sat on dead people.
Abel Crew accepted the alternative meekly.

"Any way, you must allow me to go home first to lock my house up, and to
see to one or two other little matters," said he.

"Not unless you goes under my own eyes," retorted old Jones. "You might
be for destroying your stock o' pills for fear they should bear evidence
again' you, Abel Crew."

"My pills are, of all things, what I would not destroy," said Abel.
"They would bear testimony for me, instead of against me, for they are
harmless."

So Abel Crew hobbled to his cottage on the common, attended by old Jones
and a tail of followers. Arrived there, he attended the first thing to
his scalded foot, dressing it with some of his own ointment. Then he
secured some bread and butter, not knowing what the accommodation at the
lock-up might be in the shape of eatables, and changed his handsome
quaint suit of clothes for those he wore every day. After that, he was
escorted back to the lock-up.

Now, the lock-up was in Piefinch Cut, nearly opposite to Dovey the
blacksmith's. The Squire remembered the time when the lock-up stood
alone; when Piefinch Cut had no more houses in it than Piefinch Lane now
has; but since then Piefinch Cut had been built upon and inhabited;
houses touching even the sacred walls of the lock-up. A tape-and-cotton
and sweetstuff shop supported it on one side, and a small pork-butcher's
on the other. Pettipher's drug shop, should anybody be curious on the
point, was next to the tape-and-cotton mart.

To see Abel Crew arriving in the custody of old Jones the constable, the
excited stragglers after them, astonished Piefinch Cut not a little.
Figg the pawnbroker--who was originally from Alcester--considered
himself learned in the law. Anyway, he was a great talker, and liked to
give his opinion upon every topic that might turn up. His shop joined
Dovey's forge: and when we arrived there, Figg was outside, holding
forth to Dovey, who had his shirt-sleeves rolled up above his elbows as
usual, his leather apron on. Mrs. Dovey stood listening behind, in the
smart gown and red-ribboned bonnet she had worn at the inquest.

"Why--what on earth!--have they been and gone and took up Crew?" cried
Figg in surprise.

"It is an awful shame of old Jones," I broke in; speaking more to Dovey
than Figg, for Figg was no favourite of mine. "A whole week of the
lock-up! Only think of it, Dovey!"

"But have they brought it in again' him, Master Johnny?" cried Dovey,
unfolding his grimy arms to touch his paper cap to me as he spoke.

"_No_; that's what they have not done. The inquest is adjourned for a
week; and I don't believe old Jones has a right to take him at all. Not
legally, you know."

"That's just what her brought word," said Dovey, with a nod in the
direction of his wife. "'Well, how be it turned, Ann?' says I to her
when her come back--for I'd a sight o' work in to-day and couldn't go
myself. 'Oh, it haven't turned no ways yet, Jack,' says her; 'it be put
off to next week.' There he goes! right in."

This last remark applied to Abel Crew. After fumbling in his pocket for
the two big keys, tied together with string, and then fumbling at the
latch, old Jones succeeded in opening the door. Not being much used, the
lock was apt to grow rusty. Then he stood back, and with a flourish of
hands motioned Abel in. He made no resistance.

"They must know for certain as 'twere his pills what done it," struck in
Mrs. Dovey.

"No, they don't," said I. "What's more, I do not think it was his pills.
Abel Crew says he never put poison in his pills yet, and I believe him."

"Well, and no more it don't stand to reason as he would, Mr. Ludlow,"
said Figg, a man whose self-complaisance was not to be put down by any
amount of discouragement. "I were just a-saying so to Dovey---- Why have
old Jones took him up?" went on Figg to Gibbon the gamekeeper, who came
striding by.

"Jones says he has the coroner's orders for it," answered Gibbon.

"Look here, I know a bit about law, and I know a man oughtn't to be shut
up till some charge is brought again' him," contended Figg. "Crew's
pills is suspected, but he have not been charged yet."

"Anyway, it's what Jones has gone and done," said Gibbon. "Perhaps he is
right. And a week's not much; it'll soon pass. But as to any pills of
Abel Crew's having killed them children, it's just preposterous to think
of it."

"What d'ye suppose did kill 'em, then, Richard Gibbon?" demanded Ann
Dovey, a hot flush on her face, her tone full of resentment.

"That's just what has to be found out," returned Gibbon, passing on his
way.

"If it hadn't been for Dobbs and Butcher Perkins holding out again' it,
Crew 'ud ha' been brought in guilty safe enough," said Ann Dovey. And
the tone was again so excited, so bitterly resentful against Dobbs and
Perkins, that I could not help looking at her in wonder. It sounded just
as though the non-committal of Abel were a wrong inflicted upon herself.

"No, he would not have been brought in guilty," I answered her; "he
would have been committed for trial; but that's a different thing. If
the matter could be sifted to the bottom, I know it would be found that
the mischief did not lie with Abel Crew's pills. There, Mrs. Dovey!"

She was looking at me out of the corners of her eyes--for all the world
as if she were afraid of me, or of what I said. I could not make her
out.

"Why should you wish so particularly to bring it home to Crew?" I
pointedly asked her; and Figg turned round to look at her, as if
seconding the question.

"Me want particular to bring it home to Crew!" she retorted, her voice
rising with temper; or perhaps with fear, for she trembled like an aspen
leaf. "I don't want to bring it home particular to him, Mr. Ludlow. It
were his pills, though, all the same, that did it."

And with that she whisked through the forge to her kitchen.

                 *       *       *       *       *

On the morning following I got old Jones to let me into the lock-up. The
place consisted of two rooms opening into one another, and a small
square space, no bigger than a closet, at the end of the passage, where
they kept the pen and ink. For that small space had a window in it,
looking on to the fields at the back; the two rooms had only skylights
in the roof. In the inner room a narrow iron bedstead stood against the
wall, a mattress and blanket on it. Abel was sitting on that when we
went in.

"You must have been lively here last night, Abel!"

"Yes, very, sir," answered he, with a half-smile. "I did not really mind
it; I am used to be alone. I could have done with fewer rats, though."

"Oh, are there rats here?"

"Lots of them, Master Johnny. I don't like rats. They came upon my face,
and all about me."

"Why does old Jones not set traps for them? He considers this place to
be under his special protection."

"There are too many for any trap to catch," answered Abel.

Old Jones had gone off to the desk in the closet, having placed some
bread and butter and milk on the shelf for Abel. His errand there was
to enter the cost of the bread in the account-book, to be settled for
later. A prisoner in the lock-up was commonly treated to bread and
water: old Jones had graciously allowed this one to pay for some butter
and milk out of his own pocket.

"I don't want to treat 'em harsher nor I be obliged, Master Ludlow," he
said to me, when coming in, in reference to the butter and the milk he
was carrying. "Abel Crew have been known as a decent man ever since he
come among us: and if he chooses to pay for the butter and the milk,
there ain't no law against his having 'em. 'Tain't as if he was a
burglar."

"No, he is not a burglar," I answered. "And you must mind that you do
not get into the wrong box about him. There's neither law nor justice in
locking him up, Jones, before he is charged."

"If I had never locked up nobody till they was charged, I should ha'
been in the wrong box many a time afore now," said old Jones, doggedly.
"Look at that there man last Christmas; what I caught prowling in the
grounds at Parrifer Hall, with a whole set of house-breaking things
concealed in his pockets! After I'd took him, and lodged him in here
safe, it was found that he was one o' the worst characters in the
county, only let out o' Worcester goal two days before. Suppose I'd
not took him, Master Johnny? where 'ud the spoons at Parrifer Hall ha'
been?"

"That was a different case altogether."

"_I_ know what I'm about," returned Jones. "The coroner, he just give me
a nod or two, looking at Crew as he give it. I knew what it meant, sir:
a nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse."

Anyway, Jones had him, here in the lock-up: and had gone off to enter
the loaf in the account-book; and I was sitting on the bench opposite
Abel.

"It is a wicked shame of them to have put you here, Abel."

"It is not legal--as I believe," he answered. "And I am sure it is not
just, sir. I swear those pills and that box produced at the inquest were
none of mine. They never went out of my hands. Old Jones thinks he is
doing right to secure me, I suppose, and he is civil over it; so I must
not grumble. He brought me some water to wash in this morning, and a
comb."

"But there's no _sense_ in it. You would not attempt to escape; you
would wait for the reassembling of the inquest."

"Escape!" he exclaimed. "I should be the first to remain for it. I am
more anxious than any one to have the matter investigated. Truth to say,
Master Johnny, my curiosity is excited. Hester Reed is so persistent in
regard to their being the pills and box that I gave her; and as she is a
truthful honest woman, one can't see where the mistake lies. There must
be a mystery in it somewhere."

"Suppose you are committed to take your trial? And found guilty?"

"That I shall be committed, I look upon as certain," he answered. "As to
being found guilty--if I am, I must bear it. God knows my innocence, and
I shall hope that in time He will bring it to light."

"All the same, Abel, they ought not to put you in here."

"That's true, sir."

"And then there will be the lying in prison until the assizes--two or
three good months to come! Don't go and die of it, Abel."

"No, I shall not do that," he answered, smiling a little. "The
consciousness of innocence will keep me up."

I sat looking at him. What light could get in through the dusty skylight
fell on his silver hair, which fell back from his pale face. He held his
head down in thought, only raising it to answer me. Some movement in the
closet betokened old Jones's speedy approach, and I hastened to assure
Abel that all sensible people would not doubt his innocence.

"No one need doubt it, Master Johnny," he answered firmly, his eye
kindling. "I never had a grain of arsenic in my house; I have never had
any other poison. There are herbs from which poison may be distilled,
but I have never gathered them. When it comes to people needing
poison--and there are some diseases of the human frame that it may be
good for--they should go to a qualified medical man, not to a herbalist.
No. I have never, never had poison or poisonous herbs withing my
dwelling; therefore (putting other reasons aside) it is _impossible_
that those pills can have been my pills. God hears me say it, and knows
that it is true."

Old Jones, balancing the keys in his hand, was standing within the
room, listening. Abel Crew was so respectable and courteous a prisoner,
compared with those he generally had in the lock-up, burglars, tipsy
men, and the like, returning him a "thank you" instead of an oath, that
he had already begun to regard him with some favour, and the assertion
seemed to make an impression on him.

"Look here," said he. "Whose pills could they have been, if they warn't
yours?"

"I cannot imagine," returned Abel Crew. "I am as curious about it as any
one else--Master Ludlow here knows I am. I dare say it will come out
sometime. They _could not_ have been made up by me."

"What was that you told the coroner about your pill-boxes being marked?"
asked old Jones.

"And so they are marked; all of them. The pill-box I saw there----"

"I mean the stock o' boxes you've got at home. Be they all marked?"

"Every one of them. When I have in a fresh lot of pill-boxes the first
thing I do, on bringing them home, is to mark them."

"Then look here. You just trust me with the key of your place, and tell
me where the boxes are to be found, and I'll go and secure 'em, and lay
'em afore the coroner. If they be all found marked, it'll tell in your
favour."

The advice sounded good, and Abel Crew handed over his key. Jones looked
solemn as he and I went away together.

"It's an odd thing, though, Master Johnny, ain't it, how the pison could
ha' got into them there pills," said he slowly, as he put the big key
into the lock of the outer door.

And we had an audience round us before the words were well spoken. To
see the lock-up made fast when there was a prisoner within it, was
always a coveted recreation in Piefinch Cut. Several individuals had
come running up; not to speak of children from the gutters. Dovey stood
gazing in front of his forge; Figg, who liked to be lounging about
outside when he had no customers transacting delicate negotiations
within, backed against his shop-window, and stared in concert with
Dovey. Jones flourishing the formidable keys, crossed over to them.

"How do he feel to-day?" asked Figg, nodding towards the lock-up.

"He don't feel no worse appariently than he do other days," replied old
Jones. "It be a regular odd thing, it be."

"What be odd?" asked Dovey.

"How the pison could ha' got into them there pills. Crew says he has
never had no pison in his place o' no kind, herbs nor else."

"And I would pledge my word that it is the truth," I put in.

"Well, and so I think it is," said Dovey. "Last night George Reed was in
here a-talking. He says he one day come across Abel Crew looking for
herbs in the copse behind the Grange. Crew was picking and choosing:
some herbs he'd leave alone, and some he dug up. Reed spied out a
fine-looking plant, and called to him. Up comes Crew, trowel in hand,
bends down to take a look, and then gives his head a shake. 'That won't
do for me,' says he, 'that plant has poisonous properties,' says he;
'and I never meddles with them that has,' says he. George Reed told us
that much in this here forge last night. Him and his wife have a'most
had words about it."

"Had words about what?" asked old Jones.

"Why, about them pills. Reed tells her that if it is the pills what
poisoned the young ones, she have made some mull o' the box Abel give
her and got it changed. But he don't believe as 'twere the pills at all.
And Hester Reed, she sticks to it that she never made no mull o' the
box, and that the pills is the same."

At this juncture, happening to turn my head, I saw Mrs. Dovey at the
door at the back of the forge, her face screwed round the doorpost,
listening: and there was a great fear on it. Seeing me looking at her,
she disappeared like a shot, and quietly closed the door. A thought
flashed across me.

"That woman knows more about it than she will say! And it is frightening
her. What can the mystery be?"

The children were buried on the Sunday afternoon, all the parish
flocking to the funeral; and the next morning Abel Crew was released.
Whether old Jones had become doubtful as to the legality of what he had
done, or whether he received a mandate from the coroner by the early
post, no one knew. Certain it was, that before nine o'clock old Jones
held the lock-up doors open, and Abel Crew walked out. It was thought
that some one must have written privately to the coroner--which was more
than likely. Old Jones was down in the mouth all day, as if he had had
an official blowing-up.

Abel and his stick went home. The rest and his own doctoring had very
nearly cured the instep. On the Saturday old Jones had made a descent
upon the cottage and cleared it of the pill-boxes. Jones found that
every box had Abel's private mark upon it.

"Well, this is a curious start, Crew!" exclaimed Mr. Duffham, meeting
him as he was turning in at his gate. "Now in the lock-up, and now out
of it! It may be old Jones's notion of law, but it is not mine. How have
you enjoyed it?"

"It would not have been so bad but for the rats, sir," replied Abel. "I
could see a few stars shining through the skylight."

                 *       *       *       *       *

The days went on to the Thursday, and it was now the evening before the
adjourned inquest. Tod and I, in consideration of the popular ferment,
had taken the Squire at a favourable moment, and extracted from him
another week's holiday. Opinions were divided: some believed in Crew,
others in the poisoned pills. As to Crew himself, he was out in his
garden as usual, attending to his bees, and his herbs and flowers, and
quietly awaiting the good or the ill luck that Fate might have in store
for him.

It was Thursday evening, I say; and I was taking tea with Duffham.
Having looked in upon him, when rushing about the place, he asked me
to stay. The conversation turned upon the all-engrossing topic; and I
chanced to mention that the behaviour of Ann Dovey puzzled me. Upon
that, Duffham said that it was puzzling him. He had been called in to
her the previous day, and found her in a regular fever, eyes anxious,
breath hysterical, face hectic. Since the day of the inquest she had
been more or less in this state, and the blacksmith told Duffham he
could not make out what had come to her. "Them pills have drove her mad,
sir," were Dovey's words; "she can't get 'em off her mind."

The last cup of tea was poured out, and Duffham was shaking round the
old black pot to see if he could squeeze out any more, when we received
an interruption. Dovey came bursting in upon us straight from his forge;
his black hair ruffled, his small dark face hot with flurry. It was a
singular tale he had come to tell. His wife had been making a confession
to him. Driven pretty nearly out of her mind by the weight of a secret,
she could hold it no longer.

To begin at the beginning. Dovey's house swarmed with black-beetles.
Dovey himself did not mind the animals, but Mrs. Dovey did; and no
wonder, when she could not step out of bed in the night without putting
her foot on one. But, if Dovey did not dislike black-beetles, there was
another thing he did dislike--hated in fact; and that was the stuff
called beetle-powder: which professed to kill them. Mrs. Dovey would
have scattered some on the floor every night; but Dovey would not allow
it. He forbid her to bring a grain of it into the house: it was nothing
but poison, he said, and might chance to kill themselves as well as the
beetles. Ann Dovey had her way in most matters, for Dovey was easy, as
men and husbands go; but when once he put his veto on a thing, she knew
she might as well try to turn the house round as turn him.

Now what did Ann Dovey do? On that very Easter Tuesday, as it chanced,
as soon as dusk had set in, off she went to Dame Chad's general shop in
Church Dykely, where the beetle-power was sold, and bought a packet of
it. It seemed to her, that of the choice between two evils--to put up
with the horrible black animals, or to disobey Dovey, the latter was the
more agreeable. She could easily shake some of the powder down lightly
of a night; the beetles would eat it up before morning, and Dovey would
never know it. Accordingly, paying for the powder--a square packet, done
up in blue paper, on which was labelled "Poison" in as large letters as
the printer could get into the space--she thrust it into the depths of
her gown-pocket--it was her holiday gown--and set off home again.
Calling in at George Reed's cottage on her way, she there assisted, as
it also chanced, in administering the pills to the unfortunate children.
And perhaps her motive for calling in was not so much from a love of
presiding at physic-giving, as that she might be able, when she got
home, to say "At Reed's," if her husband asked her where she had been.
It fell out as she thought. No sooner had she put foot inside the forge
than Dovey began, "Where'st been, Ann?" and she told him at Reed's,
helping with the sick little ones. Dovey's work was over for the
night; he wanted his supper; and she had no opportunity of using the
beetle-powder. It was left untouched in the pocket of her gown. The
following morning came the astounding news of the children's death; and
in the excitement caused by that, Mrs. Dovey lost sight of the powder.
Perhaps she thought that the general stir might cause Dovey to be more
wakeful than usual, and that she might as well let the powder be for a
short time. It was safe where it was, in her hung-up gown. Dovey never
meddled with her pockets: on or off, they were no concern of his.

But, on the Friday morning, when putting on this same holiday gown to
attend the inquest, to which she had been summoned, what was her horror
to find the packet burst, and her pocket filled with the loose powder.
Mrs. Dovey had no greater love for beetle-powder in itself than she had
for beetles, and visibly shuddered. She could not empty it out; there it
had to remain; for Dovey, excited by his wife's having to give evidence,
was in and out of her room like a dog in a fair; and she went off
perforce with the stuff in her pocket. And when during her examination
the questions took the turn they did take, and the coroner asked her
whether she had had any poison in her pocket that night at George
Reed's; this, with the consciousness of what had been that night
in her pocket, of what was in her pocket at that very moment, then
present, nearly frightened her into fits. From that hour, Ann Dovey had
lived in a state of terror. It was not that she believed any of the
beetle-powder _could_ have got inside the ill-fated young ones (though
she did not feel quite easy on the point), as that she feared the
accusation might be shifted off Crew's shoulders and on to hers. On this
Thursday evening she could hold out no longer; and disclosed all to
Dovey.

Dovey burst upon us in a heat. He was as straightforward a man as ever
lived, of an intensely honest nature, and could no more have kept it in,
now that he knew it, than he could have given up all righteous dealing
together. His chief concern was to tell the truth, and to restore peace
to his wife. He went through the narrative to Duffham without stopping;
and seemed not in the least to care for my being present.

"It ain't _possible_, sir, there ain't a moral _possibility_ that any o'
that there dratted powder could have come anigh the babies," wound up
Dovey. "I should be thankful, sir, if you'd come down and quieten her a
bit; her be in a fine way."

What with surprise, and what with the man's rapid speech, Duffham had
not taken in one-half of the tale. He had simply sat behind the teapot
and stared.

"My good fellow, I don't understand," he said. "A pocketful of poison!
What on earth made her take poison to George Reed's?"

So Dovey went over the heads of the story again.

"'Twas in her pocket, sir, our Ann's, it's true; but the chances are
that at that time the paper hadn't burst. None of it _couldn't_ ha' got
to them there two young ones."

To see the blacksmith's earnestness was good. His face was as eager, his
tone as imploring, as though he were pleading for his life.

"And it 'ud be a work of charity, sir, if you'd just step down and see
her. I'd pay handsome for the visit, sir; anything you please to charge.
She's like one going right out of her mind."

"I'll come," said Duffham, who had his curiosity upon the point.

And the blacksmith set off on the run home again.

"Well, this is a curious thing!" exclaimed Duffham, when he had gone.

"Could the beetle-powder have poisoned the children?" I asked.

"I don't know, Johnny. It is an odd tale altogether. We will go down and
inquire into it."

Which of course implied that he expected me to go with him. Nothing
loath was I; more eager than he.

Finishing what was left of the tea and bread-and-butter, we went on to
Piefinch Cut. Ann Dovey was alone, except for her husband and mother.
She flung herself on the sofa when she saw us--the blacksmith's house
was comfortably off for furniture--and began to scream.

"Now, just you stop that, Ann Dovey," said Duffham, who was always short
with hysterics. "I want to come to the bottom of this business; you
can't tell it me while you scream. What in the world possessed you to go
about with your pocket full of poison?"

She had her share of sense, and knew Duffham was not one to be trifled
with; so she told the tale as well as she could for sobbing.

"Have you mentioned this out of doors?" was the first question Duffham
asked when it was over.

"No," interposed Dovey. "I telled 'er afore I come to you not to be
soft enough for that. Not a soul have heard it, sir, but me and
her"--pointing to the old mother--"and you and Master Johnny. We don't
want all the parish swarming about us like so many hornets."

"Good," said Duffham. "But it is rather a serious thing, I fear.
Uncertain, at any rate."

"Be it, sir?" returned Ann, raising her heavy eyes questioningly. "Do
you think so?"

"Why, you see, the mischief must have lain between that beetle-powder
and Crew's pills. As Crew is so careful a man, I don't think it could
have been the pills; and that's the truth."

"But how could the beetle-powder have got anigh the children out of my
pocket, sir?" she asked, her eyes wild. "I never put my hand into my
pocket while I sat there; I never did."

"You can't be sure of that," returned Duffham. "We may put our hands
into our pockets fifty times a day without remembering it."

"D'you suppose, sir, I should take out some o' that there beetle-powder
and cram it down the poor innocents' throats?" she demanded, on the
verge of further screaming.

"Where is the powder?" questioned Duffham.

The powder was where it had been all along: in the gown-pocket. Want of
opportunity, through fear of Dovey's eyes, or dread of touching the
stuff, had kept her from meddling with it. When she took the gown off,
the night of the inquest, she hung it up on the accustomed hook, and
there it was still. The old mother went to the bedroom and brought it
forward, handling it gingerly: a very smart print gown with bright
flowers upon it.

Duffham looked round, saw a tin pie-dish, and turned the pocket inside
out into it. A speckled sort of powder, brown and white. He plunged his
fingers into it fearlessly, felt it, and smelt it. The blue paper it had
been sold in lay amidst it, cracked all across. Duffham took it up.

"Poison!" read out he aloud, gazing at the large letters through his
spectacles. "How came you to let it break open in your pocket, Ann
Dovey?"

"I didn't let it; it braked of itself," she sobbed. "If you saw the
black-beedles we gets here of a night, sir, you'd be fit to dance a
hornpipe, you would. The floor be covered with 'em."

"If the ceiling was covered with 'em too, I wouldn't have that there
dangerous stuff brought into the place--and so I've telled ye often,"
roared Dovey.

"It's frightful uncomfortable, is black-beedles; mother knows it," said
his wife, in a subdued voice--for Dovey in great things was master. "I
thought if I just sprinkled a bit on't down, it 'ud take 'em away, and
couldn't hurt nobody."

"And you went off on the sly that there Tuesday night and bought it," he
retorted; "and come back and telled me you had been to Reed's helping to
physic the babies."

"And so I had been there, helping to physic 'em."

"Did you go straight to Reed's from the shop--with this powder?" asked
Duffham.

"It was right at the bottom o' my pocket: I put it there as soon as Dame
Chad had served me with it," sobbed Ann Dovey. "And I can be upon my
Bible oath, Dr. Duffham, that I never touched it after; and I don't
believe it had then burst. A-coming hasty out of Reed's back-gate, for I
were in a hurry to get home, the pocket swung again' the post, and I
think the blue paper must ha' burst then. I never knowed it had burst,
for I'd never thought no more about the beedles till I put on the gownd
to go up to the inquest. Master Johnny, you be a-staring at me fearful,
but I'm telling nothing but the naked truth."

She did seem to be telling the truth. And as to my "staring at her
fearful," that was just her imagination. I was listening to the talk
from the elbow of the wooden chair, on which I had perched myself.
Duffham recommended Dovey to put the tin dish and its contents away
safely, so that it did not get near any food, but not to destroy the
stuff just yet. He talked a bit with Ann, left her a composing draught,
and came away.

"I don't see that the powder could have had anything to do with the
children's death," I said to him as we went along.

"Neither do I, Johnny!"

"Shall you have to declare this at the inquest to-morrow, Mr. Duffham?"

"I am sure I don't know," he answered, looking up at the sky through his
spectacles, just as a perplexed owl might do. "It might only serve to
complicate matters: and I don't think it's possible it could have been
the powder. On the other hand, if it be proved not to have been the
pills, we have only this poisonous powder to fall back upon. It is a
strange affair altogether, take it in all its bearings."

I did not answer. The evening star was beginning to show itself in the
sky.

"I must feel my way in this, Johnny: be guided by circumstances," he
resumed, when we halted at the stile that led across the fields to the
Manor. "We must watch the turn matters take to-morrow at the inquest.
Of course if I find it necessary to declare it, I shall declare it.
Meanwhile, lad, you had better not mention it to any one."

"All right, Mr. Duffham. Good-evening."

                 *       *       *       *       *

The jury went straggling into the Silver Bear by twos and threes. Up
dashed the coroner's gig, as before, he and his clerk seated side by
side. All the parish had collected about the doors, and were trying to
push into the inquest-room.

Gliding quietly in, before the proceedings were opened, came Abel Crew
in his quaint velvet suit, his silver hair gleaming in the sunlight, his
pale face calm as marble. The coroner ordered him to sit on a certain
chair, and whispered to old Jones. Upon which the constable turned his
gouty legs round, marched up, and stood guard over Crew, just as though
Abel were his prisoner.

"Do you see that, sir?" I whispered to Duffham.

"Yes, lad, and understand it. Crew's pills have been
analyzed--officially this time, as the jury put it--and found to contain
arsenic. Pettipher was right. The pills killed the children."

Well, you might have knocked me down with a feather. I had been fully
trusting in Crew's innocence.

About the first witness called, and sworn, was the professional man from
a distance who had analyzed the pills. He said that they contained
arsenic. Not in sufficient quantity to hurt a grown-up person; more than
sufficient to kill a little child. The coroner drew in his lips.

"I thought it must be so," he said, apparently for the benefit of
the jury. "Am I to understand that these were improper pills to send
out?--pills that no medical man would be likely to send?"

"Not improper at all, sir," replied the witness. "A medical man would
prescribe them for certain cases. Not for children: to an infant one
would be what it has been here--destruction."

I felt a nudge at my elbow, and turned to see the Squire's hot face
close to mine.

"Johnny, don't you ever stand up for that Crew again. He ought to be
hanged."

But the coroner, after a bit, seemed puzzled; or rather, doubtful. Led
to be so, perhaps, by a question put by one of the jury. It was Perkins
the butcher.

"If these pills were furnished by Abel Crew for Hester Reed, a growed
woman, and she went and gave one of her own accord to the two babies,
ought Crew to be held responsible for that?"

Upon which there ensued some cavilling. Some of the jury holding that he
was _not_ responsible; others that he was. The coroner reminded them of
what Hester Reed had stated in her evidence--that she had asked Crew's
opinion about the suitability of the pills for children, and he had told
her they were suitable.

Hester Reed was called. As the throng parted to make way for her to
advance, I saw Ann Dovey seated at the back of the room, looking more
dead than alive. Dovey stood by her, having made himself spruce for the
occasion. Ann would have gone off a mile in some opposite direction, but
old Jones's orders to all the witnesses of the former day, to appear
again, had been peremptory. They had been wanted before, he told them,
and might be wanted again.

"You need not look such a scarecrow with fright," I whispered in Ann
Dovey's ear, making my way to her side to reassure her, the woman was so
evidently miserable. "It was the pills that did the mischief, after
all--didn't you hear? Nothing need come out about your pocket and the
powder."

"Master Johnny, I'm just about skeered out o' my life, I am. Fit to go
and drown myself."

"Nonsense! It will be all right as far as you are concerned."

"I said it was Crew's pills, all along, I did; it couldn't have been
anything else, sir. All the same, I wish I was dead."

As good try to console a post, seemingly, as Ann Dovey. I went back to
my standing-place between the Squire and Duffham. Hester Reed was being
questioned then.

"Yes, sir, it were some weeks ago. My little boy was ailing, and I ran
out o' the house to Abel Crew, seeing the old gentleman go past the
gate, and asked whether I might give him one of them there same pills,
or whether it would hurt the child. Crew said I might give it freely; he
said two even wouldn't hurt him."

"And did you give the pill?" asked the coroner.

"No, sir. He's a rare bad one to give physic to, Gregory is, and I let
him get well without it."

"How old is he?"

"Turned of three, sir."

"You are absolutely certain, Mrs. Reed, that these pills, from which you
took out two to give the deceased children, were the very self-same
pills you had from Abel Crew?"

"I be sure and certain of it, sir. Nobody never put a finger upon the
box but me. It stood all the while in the corner o' the press-shelf in
the children's bedroom. Twice a week when I got upon a chair to dust
the shelf, I see it there. There was nobody in the house but me, except
the little ones. My husband don't concern himself with the places and
things."

Circumstantial evidence could not well go farther. Mrs. Reed was
dismissed, and the coroner told Abel Crew to come near the table. He
did as he was bid, and stood there upright and manly, a gentle look on
his face.

"You have heard the evidence, Abel Crew," said the coroner. "The pills
have been analyzed and found to contain a certain portion of arsenic--a
great deal more than enough to kill a child. What have you to say to
it?"

"Only this, sir; only what I said before. That the pills analyzed were
not my pills. The pills I gave to Mrs. Reed contained neither arsenic
nor any other poison."

"It is showing great obstinacy on your part to repeat that," returned
the coroner, impatiently. "Mrs. Reed swears that the pills were the same
pills; and she evidently speaks the truth."

"I am sure she thinks she speaks it," replied Abel, gently.
"Nevertheless, sir, I assure you she is mistaken. In some way the pills
must have been changed whilst in her possession, box and all."

"Why, man, in what manner do you suppose they could have been changed?"

"I don't know, sir. All I do know is, that the pills and the box
produced here last week were not, either of them, the pills and the box
she had from me. Never a box went out from me, sir, but had my private
mark on it--the mark I spoke of. Jones the constable searched my place
whilst I was detained in the lock-up, and took away all the pill-boxes
out of it. Let him testify whether he found one without the mark."

At this juncture a whole cargo of pill-boxes were shot out of a bag on
the table by old Jones, some empty, some filled with pills. The coroner
and jury began to examine them, and found the mark on all, lids and
boxes.

"And if you'd be so good as to cause the pills to be analyzed, sir, they
would be found perfectly free from poison," resumed Abel. "They are made
from herbs that possess healing properties, not irritant; a poisonous
herb, whether poisonous in itself, or one from which poison may be
extracted, I never plucked. Believe me, sir, for I am telling the truth;
the truth before Heaven."

The coroner said nothing for a minute or two: I think the words
impressed him. He began lifting the lid again from one or two of the
boxes.

"What are these pills for? All for the same disorder?"

"They were made up for different disorders, sir."

"And pray how do you distinguish them?"

"I cannot distinguish them now. They have been mixed. Even if returned
to me I could not use them. I have a piece of furniture at home, sir,
that I call my pill-case. It has various drawers in it, each drawer
being labelled with the sort of pills kept in it: camomile, dandelion,
and so on. Mr. Jones must be able to corroborate this."

Old Jones nodded. He had never seen nothing neater nor more exact in all
his life, than the keeping o' them there pills. He, Mr. Jones, had
tumbled the drawerfuls indiscriminately into his bag, and so mixed
them.

"And they will be so much loss to me," quietly observed Abel. "It does
not matter."

"Were you brought up to the medical profession?" cried the coroner--and
some of us thought he put the question in irony.

"No, sir," replied Abel, taking it seriously. "I have learnt the healing
art, as supplied by herbs and roots, and I know their value. Herbs will
cure sometimes where the regular doctor fails. I have myself cured cases
with them that the surgeons could not cure; cases that but for me, under
God, might never have been cured in this world. I make no boast of it;
any one else might do as much who had made herbs a study as I have."

"Are you making a fortune by it?" went on the coroner.

Abel shook his head.

"I have a small income of my own, sir, and it is enough for my simple
wants. What little money I make by my medicines, and honey, and that--it
is not much--I find uses for in other ways. I indulge in a new book now
and then; and there are many poor people around who need a bit of help
sometimes."

"You 'read' the stars, I am told, Abel Crew. What do you read in them?"

"The same that I read, sir, in all other of nature's works: God's
wonderful hand. His wisdom, His power, His providence."

Perhaps the coroner thought to bring Abel to ridicule in his replies:
if so, it was a mistake, for he seemed to be getting the worst of it
himself. At any rate, he quitted the subject abruptly, brushed his
energy up, and began talking to the jury.

The drift of the conversation was, so far as the room could hear
it, that Crew's pills, and only Crew's, could have been the authors
of the mischief to the two deceased children, whose bodies they were
sitting upon, and that Crew must be committed to take his trial for
manslaughter. "Hester Reed's evidence," he continued, "is so clear and
positive, that it quite puts aside any suspicion of the box of pills
having been changed----"

"The box had not my mark upon it, sir," respectfully spoke Abel Crew,
his tone anxious.

"Don't interrupt me," rebuked the coroner, sharply. "As to the box not
having what he calls his private mark upon it," he added to the jury,
"that in my opinion tells little. Because a man has put a mark on fifty
pill-boxes, he is not obliged to have put it on the fifty-first. An
unintentional omission is readily made. It appears to me----"

"Am I in time? Is it all over? Is Abel Crew found guilty?"

This unceremonious interruption to the official speech came from a
woman's voice. The door of the room was thrown open with a fling,
considerably discomposing those who had their backs against it and were
taken unawares, and they were pushed right and left by the struggles of
some one to get to the front. The coroner looked daggers; old Jones
lifted his staff; but the intruder forced her way forward with resolute
equanimity. Cathy Reed: we never remembered to call her Parrifer. Cathy
in her Sunday-going gown and a pink bonnet.

"How dare you?" cried the coroner. "What do you mean by this? Who are
you?"

"I have come rushing over from Tewkesbury to clear Abel Crew," returned
Cathy, recovering her breath after the fight. "The pills that killed the
children were my pills."

The commotion this avowal caused in the room was beyond describing. The
coroner stared, the jury all turned to look at the speaker, the crowd
trod upon one another.

"And sorry to my heart I am that it should have been so," went on Cathy.
"I loved those two dear little ones as if they were my own, and I'd
rather my pills had killed myself. Just look at that, please, Mr.
Coroner."

The ease with which Cathy spoke to the official gentleman, the coolness
with which she put down a pill-box on the green cloth before him, took
the room by surprise. As Ann Dovey remarked, later, "She must ha' learnt
that there manner in her travels with young Parrifer."

"What is this?" questioned the coroner, curtly, picking up the box.

"Perhaps you'll ask Mr. Crew whether he knows it, sir, before I say what
it is," returned Cathy.

The coroner had opened it. It contained seven pills; just the size of
the other pills, and looking exactly like them. On the lid and on the
box was the private mark spoken of by Abel Crew.

"That is my box, sir; and these--I am certain of it--are my pills,"
spoke Abel, earnestly, bending over the shoulder of the first juryman to
look into the box. "The box and the pills that I gave to Mrs. Reed."

"And so they are, Abel Crew," rejoined Cathy, emphatically. "The week
before last, which I was spending at home at father's, I changed the
one pill-box for the other, inadvertent, you see"--with a nod to the
coroner--"and took the wrong box away with me. And I wish both boxes
had been in the sea before I'd done it."

Cathy was ordered to give her account more clearly, and did so. She
had been suffering from illness, accompanied by neuralgia, and a
doctor at Tewkesbury had prescribed some pills for it, one to be taken
occasionally. The chemist who made them up told her they contained
arsenic. He was about to write the directions on the box, when Cathy,
who was in a hurry, snatched it from him, saying she could not wait for
that bother, flung down the money, and departed. This box of pills she
had brought with her on her visit to her father's, lest she should find
occasion to take one; and she had put it on the shelf of the press, side
by side with the other pill-box, to be out of the way of the children.
Upon leaving, she took up the wrong box inadvertently: carrying away
Abel Crew's pills, leaving her own. There lay the explanation of the
mystery of the fatal mistake. Mrs. Reed had not known that Cathy had any
pills with her; the girl, who was just as light-headed as ever, not
having chanced to mention it; and Cathy had the grace to dust the room
herself whilst she was there.

"When father and his wife sent me word about the death of the two little
twins, and that it was some pills of Abel Crew's that had done it, I
never once thought o' my pills," added Cathy. "They didn't as much as
come into my head. But late last night I got lent to me last Saturday's
_Worcester Herald_, and there I read the inquest, and what Crew had said
about the marks he put on his pill-boxes, and mother's evidence about
never having shifted the pill-box from its place on the press. 'Sure and
I couldn't have changed the boxes,' thought I to myself; and upstairs I
ran in a fright to look at the box I had brought away. Yes, there it
was--Abel Crew's box with the marks on it; and I knew then that I had
left my own pills at home here, and that they had killed the babies. As
soon as I could get away this morning--which was not as soon as I wanted
to--I started to come over. And that's the history--and the blessed
truth."

Of course it was the truth. Abel's beautiful face had a glow upon it.
"I knew I should be cleared in God's good time," he breathed. The Squire
pounced upon him, and shook both his hands as if he would never let them
go again. Duffham held out his.

So that was the end of the story. Cathy was reprimanded by the coroner
for her carelessness, and burst into tears in his face.

"And thee come off home wi' thee, and see me chuck that there powder
into the fire; and don't go making a spectacle o' th' self again," cried
Dovey, sharply, in his wife's ear. "Thee just let me catch thee bringing
in more o' the dratted stuff; that's all."

"I shall never look at a black-beedle again, Jack, without shivering,"
she answered; going in for a slight instalment of shivering there and
then. "It might ha' come to hanging. Leastways, that's what I've been
dreaming of."




V.

ROBERT ASHTON'S WEDDING-DAY.


The hall-clock was striking half-past five as we went out into the
sharp night-air: Mr. and Mrs. Todhetley, I, and Tod. We were spending
Christmas that year at Crabb Cot. Old Coney's dinner was fixed for six:
but country people don't observe the fashion of dashing in at the last
stroke of the hour. The weather was cold, and no mistake; the snow lay
on the ground; the stars shone like silver. This was Tuesday, New Year's
Day; and to-morrow, the second of January, Jane Coney would be married
to Robert Ashton of Timberdale. The Ashtons were to dine to-night at the
Farm, and we had been asked to meet them. If every one stood upon his
own level, we should shoot up some degrees over the Coneys' heads in the
scale of the world's ladder; for old Coney was only a plain farmer; and
you've learnt by this time what the Squire was. But the Coneys were
right-down good people, and made the best neighbours in the world.

We had only to cross the road slantwise, and old Coney had had it swept
for us. It was an old-fashioned farm-house, full of nooks and angles,
with one ugly, big room in it, oak-panelled. The cloth was laid there
for to-night, the breakfast would be for the morrow. Old Coney and Mrs.
Coney came out of the drawing-room to meet us: that was small and snug,
with a running pattern of pale roses on its white-watered walls. He was
jolly; she, plain, homely, and sensible.

Jane was quiet, like her mother; very well she looked, standing on the
carpet in her pretty blue silk dress. Her brother Tom, a tall, strong
young fellow with a red face, lifted her out of the way by the waist,
that he might shake hands all round. The eldest daughter, Mary West, was
staying there with her nurse and baby; she looked ill, and got up only
for a minute from her chair by the fire. Her husband was a lawyer, in
practice at Worcester. Another young lady was sitting near, with light
frizzed hair: Mrs. James Ashton.

Before we had settled down, wheels were heard. It was Robert Ashton's
dog-cart, bringing his two brothers, Charles and James; and Mary West's
husband. Miss Jane's cheeks turned as red as a rose for nothing: Robert
Ashton had not come with them.

I had better say who the Ashtons were. Old Ashton (the father) had
lived at Timberdale Court always. It was one of the best farms in all
Worcestershire. Old Ashton lived in good style, educated his children,
and started them well in life. Lucy, the only girl, married a Captain
Bird, who turned out to be a frightful scamp. Robert remained on the
farm with his father; Charles was a clergyman; James a doctor in
Worcester. Everybody respected Mr. Ashton. It was about three years
now since he died, and he left a good pot of money behind him. Robert
succeeded to the farm, and it was he who was to marry Jane Coney
to-morrow.

They went upstairs with their carpet-bags, having come direct from
Worcester by train; Robert Ashton's dog-cart had been waiting, as
arranged, at Timberdale Station to bring them on. Mrs. James Ashton came
over earlier in the day with Mrs. West. Robert and Charles Ashton were
both fine young men, but the doctor was slight and short. Now I hope all
that's clear; because it was necessary to say it.

What with talking and looking at the presents, the time passed. They
were laid out on a table against the wall, on a snow-white damask cloth
of rare beauty.

"Look here," whispered Mrs. Coney, taking up a scented blue-and-white
case of satin ribbon and beads for holding pocket-handkerchiefs. "Poor
Lucy Bird sent this. She must have made it herself, a thing like this,
bought, would be as much as fifteen or sixteen shillings. It came almost
anonymously: 'With best love and ever kind wishes for Robert and Jane,'
written on it; but we knew Lucy's handwriting."

"Where are they now?" asked Mrs. Todhetley, in the same mysterious
whisper.

"I fancy they are staying somewhere in Worcester. We should have liked
to have Lucy over for the wedding; but--you know how it is: we could not
ask him."

Mrs. Todhetley nodded. She wore her grey silk gown that night, which
always seemed to make her look taller and thinner than ever, and a white
lace cap with pink ribbons. A pink bow was in her light hair, and she
had put on her beautiful earrings.

There is some thorn in most families, and Lucy was the one in that of
Ashton. She was educated at the best school in Worcester, and came home
at eighteen brimful of romance. It lay in her nature. You'd hardly have
found so pretty and sentimental a girl in the county. Because her name
was Lucy Ashton, she identified herself with Scott's Lucy Ashton, and
looked out for a Master of Ravenswood. These sentimental girls sometimes
come to grief, for they possess only three parts of their share of plain
common-sense. The Master of Ravenswood came in the shape of Captain
Bird, a tall, dark man, with a flaming coat and fierce moustache. He
paid court to Lucy, and she fell in love with him before a week was
over. The Ashtons turned their backs upon him: there was something
in the man they did not like, in spite of the red coat and the black
moustache. But he won Lucy over--he had heard of her fortune, you
see--and she promised to marry him. She was a gentle, yielding, timid
girl then; but her love was strong, and she ran away. She ran away and
was married the same morning at St. Helen's church in Worcester, in
which parish Bird had been staying. It was the talk of the county; but
when the commotion had subsided, every one began to pity Lucy, saying
she would have plenty of time and cause for repentance. After all, he
was not a real captain now. He had sold out of the army; and there arose
a rumour that he had done something wrong and was obliged to sell out.

Mr. Ashton had loved Lucy better than all his children. He forgave the
marriage for Lucy's sake, and had them home on a visit, and presented
her with a handsome sum. But he made a great mistake--I've heard the
Squire say it often--in not settling it upon her. Bird spent it as soon
as he well could; and he would have spent some more that came to Lucy
when her father died, only that it was left in Robert Ashton's hands to
be paid to her quarterly. People called Bird a blackleg: said he was
about the worst man that ever stepped. Robert had offered Lucy a home at
Timberdale Court, but she would not leave her husband: she had married
him, she said, for better or worse. If he came to be transported--and he
was going on for it--the chances were that Lucy would follow him to Van
Diemen's Land.

"I say, there's six o'clock!" exclaimed Mr. Coney, as the hour struck.
"Jane, what have you done with Robert?"

"Not anything, papa. He said he should be here half-an-hour before
dinner."

"And it will soon be half-an-hour after it," returned old Coney. "If he
does not make haste, we shall sit down without him."

The clock on the mantelpiece went ticking on, and struck half-past six.
Dinner. The Squire led off the van with Mrs

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