“You come from far?”
“From the other side of the mountain.”
“Well, I reckon we can accommodate you. You must excuse me asking you so many questions; but the truth is you’re a perfect stranger to me, and it is very late for you to come here, you know; which I wouldn’t think so much of that nyther, only since that horrid murder at Black Hall I have mistrusted every stranger I see.”
Sybil’s heart gave a bound, and then sank like lead in her bosom, at hearing this allusion. Lyon also felt an increased uneasiness. Luckily they were sitting with their backs to the light, so that the gossiping landlady could not read the expression of their faces, which indeed she was too much absorbed in her subject to attempt to do. So she went straight on without stopping to take breath:
“Not that I mistrust you now, sir, which I see exactly what you are; and which likewise your having of your darter with you is a rickymindation; for men don’t go about a taking of their darters with them when they are up to robbery and murder, do they now, sir?”
“I should judge not, though I am not familiar enough with the habits of such gentry to give a decided opinion,” said farmer Howe.
“You’ll excuse me, sir; but I’m a lone widow living here, and not used to seeing much of anybody but my old neighbors, which come occasionally to enjoy of themselves; and I do mistrust most strangers—though not you, sir, with your darter, as I said before—but most other strangers, because they do say hereabouts that it was a stranger to the place, a red-headed man, as put up at the inn at Blackville that night, and never was seen afterwards, as did that murder at Black Hall.”
“Ah! do they say that? I thought they laid it on a lady,” observed farmer Howe.
“La, sir! the idee of a lady doing such a thing! and a rale high-born lady of quality like Mrs. Burns, or whatever her name was, and doing of it to one she had took in for charity too; ’tan’t likely, sir.”