“No, no, no!” broke out the vicar, with vehemence unusual to him. “The fact is, you have come here with what you consider a strong case against the poor fellow, and everything you hear goes to pad up that case. If I believed in my brother’s guilt, do you suppose I should leave my little daughter in his care, as I have done for the last week, and intend to do for another fortnight?”
“Why not parson?” said Ned, very quietly. “Neither you nor I are simple enough to think the worse of a man because he happens to have made a little slip by the way. The man who murdered my sister didn’t say to himself, ‘I will change my whole course of life and become a murderer,’ as if it were a profession. No, he is going about the world at this moment just like you or me, doing his daily duty as well as he can, and perhaps feeling sorry enough for that little slip to better his life in atonement for it.”
“Indeed, indeed he is,” broke in the vicar, earnestly. “If you could see how my brother works: how he tries by every means—”
“Hadn’t we better leave your brother’s name out of the discussion?” asked Ned, with a touch of dry insolence. “You are not anxious to fix the noose round his neck yourself, I suppose.”
The poor vicar looked beyond measure crestfallen and disconcerted. After all his assertions of his brother’s innocence, to have betrayed himself like that! He stammered and tried to explain away his unfortunate admission; but not succeeding very well, he made haste to cut short the conversation and retreat into the house with his little son.
Ned Mitchell was not left long without an object to interest him. He remained sunning himself at his garden gate for some minutes after Mr. Brander’s disappearance, and then retired into his cottage, from one of the tree-shaded windows of which he soon saw a person approaching, at sight of whom his rugged features seemed to tighten, the only sign they ever gave of unusual excitement. It was Vernon Brander. From the curious glances which the clergyman cast in the direction of the room in which the bloodhounds, now asleep after a good meal, were still confined, it was clear he had been fully informed concerning them. He stopped before the garden fence, peering among the evergreens with evident interest. But as Ned appeared at the door, with the intention of a little talk with him, he hurried on towards the Vicarage without another glance at the cottage. Ned looked after him with a curling lip.
“I suppose some people would admire that fellow, with his lanky face and his good deeds. But I never did have any fancy for your martyrs, especially when their private life won’t bear looking into.”
And after watching the clergyman until he had turned into the private road, Ned directed his attention to two visitors, who, attracted by certain rumors about the occupant of the cottage, and the menagerie he had set up there, had joined their forces on the way to pay Mr. Mitchell a morning call.
These visitors were Mr. Denison and Fred Williams. Fred had by no means got the better of his violent admiration for Olivia Denison. But having found her persistently “out” when he called at the farm, and persistently curt when he met her out of doors, he had consoled himself for her frigidity by taking a trip to New York, whence he had now not long returned. To signalize his recent achievements in the way of travel, he wore a wide-brimmed hat and a sea-sick complexion, and carried a revolver in a leather belt. This was his first meeting with any of the Hall Farm people since his return, so that, on coming face to face with Mr. Denison, who was passing through the farmyard gate, he overwhelmed him by an outburst of effusive cordiality which astonished that gentleman beyond measure, but raised his spirits, and soothed him with the feeling that here was a friend.
Mr. Denison was one of those simple-natured men who are only too ready to find a friend in any one who addresses to them a kindly word. Things had been going badly with him. Having started farming with all the skin-deep energy of the enthusiastic amateur, he had long ere this discovered the perversity of the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms: the determination with which sheep die of the rot, pigs take the measles, beans and peas refuse to come up at the proper time and crops fail on the slightest provocation, or on none. A suspicion had begun to take root even in his ingenious mind that there was more in farming than one would have thought while going over a farm; and a stronger suspicion still that, if things did not soon “take a turn,” his new profession, instead of making his fortune, would land him in the Bankruptcy Court. He could not fail, moreover, to be alive to the sturdy animosity of his rival, John Oldshaw, and to the ever-increasing pleasure which that amiable person showed on meeting him, as his own prospects of finally getting the Hall Farm at an easy rent seemed to grow better. Olivia, who understood her father’s temperament too well to communicate to him the smallest fact which was likely to trouble him, had never uttered the name of Fred Williams in his presence, except to say with much haughtiness that he was a quite insufferable person. But Mr. Denison, who never disliked anybody, would have been quite ready to set her aversion down to groundless prejudice when Fred listened sympathetically to a rambling account of the last outbreak of the feud with Oldshaw.