He had listened in much confusion to the account, changing from his wooden leg to his sound one and back again, and looking as if the vicar’s speech contained some revelation particularly painful for him to hear.
The vicar, who had been touched by his excessive modesty, was surprised at this retort.
“No, I don’t wear it now,” he said, laughing genially. “I did though, until I had the misfortune to lose it myself, some years ago. It was too large for me, as it had been for my father, and I never knew how it had gone. And you were not about to find it for me.”
“Nay, sir,” was all Abel said, with one shy glance at the bystanders.
They had formed a strange group while the vicar’s recital lasted. Each one seemed to know that something serious was impending, and to listen, in silence not all attentive, to the vicar’s innocently told reminiscences. He was the only person at ease in the little circle. Ned was standing solid and square, listening to Mr. Brander’s little story with a contemptuous face; Vernon Brander, who seemed of late to be growing daily more lean, more haggard, kept his eyes fixed upon Ned with an expression of undisguised apprehension; while Mrs. Brander, whose great black eyes were flashing with excitement to which she allowed no other vent, looked steadily from one to the other of the rest of the group, as she stood a little away from them all, motionless and silent, like a beautiful statue.
When the vicar’s prattle had come to an end, there was a pause. He seemed himself to become at last aware that the minds about him were occupied with some more serious matter, and he turned to Ned with a look of inquiry—
“Is anything the matter, Mr. Mitchell?” he asked. “You look less happy than a man should do who has just been released from the confinement of a sick bed. Can I advise you or counsel you in any way? Would you like to come into my study?”
Ned raised his head and looked at him like a bull in the arena.
“No,” he said, savagely, “the garden will do for what I have to say. It’s only this: My bloodhounds have been poisoned”—a little shiver of intense excitement seemed to run through the group—“And by the same hand that killed my sister. Now I give the man who did both those acts till this time to-morrow to confess publicly that he’s been a great hypocrite for ten years, with good words on his lips and bad thoughts in his heart. But if in those four-and-twenty hours he don’t confess, then he shall be buried at the country’s expense before the year’s out.”
There was dead silence after this speech, which Ned delivered, not in his usual coarse, loud tones, but in husky, spasmodic jerks, and with the manner of a man bitterly in earnest. The vicar listened with great attention; Abel Squires seemed to wish, but not to dare, to move away; Vernon shook from head to foot with high nervous excitement; while Mrs. Brander moved to the side of her brother-in-law, and stole her hand within his arm.