The next day it was known in camp that the wounded man was sinking. There was a general feeling of pity for the girl who was believed to be his daughter, but none for the man himself, owing to his having been detected cheating—one of the deepest of crimes in a community where all men gambled more or less.
The next morning it was known that he was dead. He was buried a few hours later. Had he died in good odour, the whole camp would have followed him to his grave; but not one would attend the funeral of a detected cheat, and Murdoch had to hire six men to carry the roughly-made coffin to a cleared spot among the pines that had been set apart as the graveyard of the camp. He himself followed, the only mourner, and those who saw the little procession pass through the camp remarked on Murdoch's stern and frowning face. When the body was consigned to the earth—without prayer or ceremony—Murdoch went down to where Ned was at work.
'Come round this evening,' he said; 'there is a lot to tell you.'
When he went into the saloon in the evening, Murdoch beckoned him into the inner room. Having closed the door, he placed a bottle, a jug of water, and two tumblers upon the table.
'Now,' he said, 'sit down. I have a long story and a bad one to tell you. As I said the other night, I am not a good man, Captain Hampton. I have been mixed up in all sorts of shady transactions on the turf at home, and if I had not made a bolt for it should have got seven years for nobbling a horse. I was among a pretty bad lot at New Orleans, and many a sailor was hocussed and robbed at my place, and I pretty near caused your murder; and yet, I tell you, if I had known what a black-hearted villain that man Warbles—or, as he says his name really is, Truscott—was, I would have shot him rather than have taken his hand. First, will you tell me how much you know of him?'
Ned Hampton told what he knew of the man; of his disappointment at his not obtaining his father's position of steward at Mr. Hawtrey's, of the threats he had made, and how, as it seemed, he carried out those threats by first giving rise to the rumours that Miss Hawtrey was at the mercy of some one who held damaging letters of hers, and then by causing Linda to personate her in the commission of audacious thefts.
'You don't know half of it,' Murdoch said; 'he told it all to her and me, boasting of the vengeance he had taken. You were a boy of eight when Mr. Hawtrey's wife died—do you remember anything about it?'
'Very little,' Ned replied, after sitting for a minute or two—trying to recall the past. 'I remember there was a great talk about it. She died a week or two after Miss Hawtrey was born. I remember there was a shock, or a loss, or something of that sort, but I do not remember more than that. Oh, yes, I do; I remember there was another baby, and that somehow she and her nurse were drowned.'
'Yes, that was it. Truscott was at the bottom of it; he told us he had been watching for his chance. It seems that when the twins came the mother could not nurse them. Two women were obtained as foster mothers; Truscott got hold of one of them. I believe from what he said she had belonged to the place, but had been away in London and had only returned a month or two, and had had a baby which had died a day or two before Mrs. Hawtrey's were born, and although she had no character they were glad enough to secure her services in the emergency. Truscott, as I said, got hold of her and bribed her heavily to consent to carry out his orders. One evening she pretended to get drunk. She was of course discharged, but being apparently too drunk to be turned out on a wet and wild night, as it happened to be, she was put in a room upstairs and was to be sent away first thing in the morning.
'The two babies slept in cradles in their mother's room. In the morning the one she had nursed was gone and so was the woman. The latter's bonnet was found at the end of the garden which ran down to the Thames. The supposition naturally was that she had awoke half-sobered in the morning, with sense enough to remember how she had disgraced herself, and had determined to drown herself and the child. The river was dragged; the woman's shawl was found caught in a bush dipping into the water, and a torn garment which was recognised as that in which the baby had been put to bed was fished out of the river miles down. The woman's body was never found, but the river was in flood and it might have been swept out to sea in a few hours. A little baby's body was cast ashore below Kew. It could not be identified, but no doubts were entertained that it was the one they were in search of, and it was buried with Mrs. Hawtrey, for whom the excitement and shock had been too much.'