"I heard everything," said Jantshi, sighing; "I heard everything from the beginning to the end, and I shudder still when I think of it!—I wanted to jump out to help the poor man, but I was so frightened; and then I thought, too, if any thing dreadful should happen, and I should be found there; and then I became so frightened that I had no power to move."
"Well, what did you hear?" inquired Lady Rety, encouragingly; "you surely must know whether it was Tengelyi, as the justice suspects, or not? Now sit down and tell us all about it," said she, meeting at the same moment the glance which her husband cast at her when she mentioned Tengelyi.
"If you think," said the sheriff, turning to the Jew, "to exculpate yourself by cunningly involving an innocent man, you shall find yourself mistaken; you may say what you will, the strongest suspicion must always remain attached to you."
The Jew was too cunning to make any reply, and merely said that "he could not tell who the murderer was, as he spoke in a suppressed voice; but," said he, "I heard Tengelyi mentioned several times, and I heard papers demanded, and the murderer took papers away with him; but as I said before, I don't know who he was; those who followed him ought to know."
Ferko, the coachman, who had hitherto been a quiet listener, was now asked to give a circumstantial account of what he knew. There are people who are very eager to do any thing but their duty: Ferko was one of them. When the house was first alarmed by the attorney's assassination, Ferko was the first to leave his stables and to pursue the murderer, accompanied by the servants, who showed no less zeal than himself. But when the pursuit led to a very different result from what he had expected, and when, instead of taking the robber, he followed the track to Tengelyi's house, where he saw the notary, his zeal vanished, and it struck him that not to have seen any thing was by far the most prudent way of managing the matter. Perhaps he suspected the notary; but he was not inclined to endanger his own safety by giving evidence against a man whose rank in life was so far above his own. He resolved to give no evidence against Tengelyi; and as this resolution was unconditionally approved of by his best friend, to wit, by Peti the gipsy, he stated, in reply to the sheriff's questions, that he had pursued the robber to the banks of the Theiss, where he had lost his track. Afterwards, he and his friends had proceeded to the notary to inform him of what had happened.
This account would have been quite satisfactory, but for the evidence of the servant who had accompanied the coachman on his expedition; and who, merely for the sake of varying the lesser features of the evidence, stated that they had picked up a stick on the field, and that the said stick was in the ferryman's possession. That person was called in and examined: the result was, that all the unfavourable circumstances which spoke against Tengelyi were gradually elicited from the trio, in spite of the obstinate defence which they made of the notary's innocence.
"But where is the stick you talk of?" said Mr. Skinner, with evident satisfaction at the turn which the examination took.
"With your worship's permission," replied the ferryman—"that is to say, begging your worship's pardon—that is to say, I hope your worship will excuse me, we found the stick in the middle of the road, on our way from the Theiss to the notary's. We all saw it as it lay on the ground."
"Where is it?" asked Mr. Skinner, sharply.
"Please your worship, I have left it in the kitchen, for I could not presume to come to your worship with a stick."