“‘I remember quite well how a very charming young surgeon came into this neighbourhood, a Mr. Stirling; he was beloved by everybody, and though he was as poor as a church-mouse, he had not an enemy in the world. After his medical rounds, he was in the habit of riding home through a lovely wooded lane which there is near Gibside, with trees on each side and the river below. One day—one Friday—as he was riding home this way, he was shot by some men concealed amongst the bushes. His body was dragged into the wood and was searched and rifled; but he was very poor, dear man; he had nothing but his watch, and the brutes took that: and that is all I have to say about him.
“‘On the night before, the wife of Mr. Bowes’s agent, who was in the habit of going every week to receive money at the lead-mines, some miles distant from Gibside, awoke dreadfully agitated. She told her husband that she had had a most terrible dream, and conjured him, as he loved her, to stay at home that day, and not to go to the mines. She said she did not know the place herself, but she saw a wooded lane above a river and some men hiding in bushes, and she saw him come riding along, and the men shoot at him from behind, and drag him into the bushes. He laughed at her, and said of course he could not neglect his duty to his master for such an idle fancy as that, and that he must go to the mines.
“‘She fell asleep again, and she dreamt the same thing, and she urgently entreated and implored him not to go. He said, “I must; the men will be expecting me; they are to meet me there, and I have really no excuse to give.”
“‘She fell asleep the third time, and she dreamt the same thing, and awoke with agonised entreaties that her husband would accede to her wishes. Then he really began to be frightened himself, and at last he said he would make a concession; he would go to the mines, but he would not go by the wooded lane at all (for he was obliged to allow there was such a place), but would both go and return by the high moorland way on the other side the river.
“‘So the agent was saved and the poor young surgeon was murdered in his place.
“‘The watch which had been taken was found afterwards in a pawnbroker’s at Durham, and the men who pawned it were traced and taken: Cain and Rain were their odd names. In the hand of the murdered man was found a button of pink glass, imitation amethyst, which exactly matched those on Cain’s waistcoat, with a bit of the stuff hanging to it, as if the dead man’s hand had clenched it in a struggle. But Cain’s friends got hold of the discovery, and sowed the wood with similar pink buttons, which were found; so that evidence went for nothing and Cain got off, but every one believed that he and Rain did it.
“‘Years afterwards, Cain was ill and sent for Harry,[238] and confided a secret to him under strict vows of secrecy, and no one knows what that secret was.’”
“Kinmel, Nov. 30.—I left Ravensworth early on Monday to go to Ridley Hall. In a few minutes after arriving, White the butler came to say that Cousin Susan would see me. She was in her little sitting-room, half sitting up on her sofa before an immense fire. At above eighty, her face and figure have still the look of youth which they had at thirty-five, and that quite unaided by art, though not by dress. She has now quite lost the use of her feet, and is cut off from all her usual employments, her garden, her walks, her china, and, if it were not that she is so long inured to solitary habits, her life would be indeed most desolate. She talked all afternoon and evening, chiefly about Tyneside politics or family reminiscences. She asked me whom I thought she had better leave her fortune to. I said, ‘After Mr. Bowes, to one of the Strathmore boys.’ She would not take leave of me at night, pretending she should see me next day, but I knew then that she did not mean to do it. She said, as I went out, ‘You may think that you have given me one happy day.’
“I slept at Chester on Tuesday, and walked round the walls by moonlight, most picturesque and desolate, with only the tramp of an occasional wanderer making the night more silent by its echoes.
“Yesterday I came here. A beautiful ascent through woods leads from the seaboard to this house, magnificent in the style of a Louis XIV. château externally, with Morris paper and colour inside. There is a man party here—Lord Colville, Sir Dudley Marjoribanks, Lord de Lisle, Hedworth Williamson, Lord Delamere. Hedworth is most amusing, and Lord de Lisle not without a quaint humour.”