“Yes, dead as a herring.”
“It’s a shocking affair; really a shocking affair,” continued Henderson, hastily; “poor girl!”
“Ay, poor lass!”
“It might have happened so—in her disappointment, you know, she may have shot herself, that is if she had anything to shoot herself with?”
“They say her father’s revolver was lying nigh her.”
“Then I fear it has happened so. Don’t you think so, Jack? How lucky for me that I did not go near.”
“Quite a close shave.”
“Yes, quite a close shave indeed. Well, Jack, now we’ve arranged it, I’ll go into the house and get you the ten pounds—but remember you were to say a stranger—that a stranger gave you the note.”
Jack nodded and Henderson hastily returned to the house, and speedily reappeared with two crisp five-pound bank notes in his pocket, which he soon placed in Jack’s horny hand, who at once deposited them in his corduroys. But when they were safely there, he looked up with his shrewd brown eyes in his master’s face.