"I have seen in the daily papers," continued Mr. Fleming, "some most extraordinary statements regarding a horrible event which has taken place at Northferry, in your own grounds. I allude, of course, to the murder of Mr. Roberts; and I am shocked to find that an innocent man has not only been charged with the crime, but has actually been committed for trial on the coroner's warrant. From your father's account of his head-gardener, who under the name of Acton excited so much wonder by his erudition, I was speedily led to believe that he was superior to the station he assumed. To hear therefore that he was in reality no other than Mr. Chandos Winslow, did not excite in me the same surprise which it did, I dare say, in others. I never spoke with him but once; and then he affected a certain roughness of manner, mingled strangely enough with quotations from Roman poets; but I saw him several times at a distance in your grounds, and felt sure from his walk and carriage that he was no ordinary man. I was informed accidentally of his relationship to Sir William Winslow the night before I left Northferry; but little expected to hear such a charge against him. Doubtless he will be able to prove his innocence; but still such things ought not to be left to chance, and I shall therefore tender my evidence, which, if the statements in the newspapers be correct, must have some weight."
The letter was dated from Sandbourne Vicarage, a place about forty miles distant, on the other side of the county; and Rose had just finished looking over it again, when her maid entered her room to tell her that a gentleman from London was below in the library, and wished to speak with her immediately. At the same time the girl handed her a card, on which was printed a name of which she had no knowledge, except from having seen it mentioned frequently in the public journals, as that of the most eminent barrister of the day.
Putting the letter she had previously received into her bag, she went down with some degree of trepidation to the library, to meet a complete, stranger, at a moment when her mind was by no means disposed to society of any kind; but her visitor soon put her at her ease, by the winning gentleness of his manner.
"I have to apologize Miss Tracy," he said, "for intruding thus upon a lady without any proper introduction; but my anxiety for the safety of a very dear friend must plead my excuse. Chandos Winslow, whom I think you know, and whom you must at all events be acquainted with under the strange guise of a gardener, is an old and intimate acquaintance of mine; and I have undertaken, against my ordinary rule, to conduct his defence, in the painful and dangerous circumstances in which he is now placed."
"Oh, I am so glad to see you," said Rose; "but your words frighten me. I had hoped that it would be perfectly easy to establish his innocence, of which I am sure you can have no more doubt than I have."
"None," answered the barrister; "but I must not deceive you, my dear young lady. His case is one of very great danger; for there never was a stronger chain of circumstantial evidence against any man than against him. But let us sit down and talk the matter over calmly;--nay, do not weep;--for on the evidence that you can give, may very likely depend the result of the trial."
Rose nevertheless wept only the more from that announcement; for to think that the life of the man she loved might depend upon the manner in which she told a tale, simple enough, but susceptible of being turned in various ways by the skill of any unscrupulous counsel, did not at all tend to decrease her agitation.
"This is very foolish of me," she said, at length, drying her eyes; "but I shall be better in a moment. Pray go on: what is it you wished to say?"
"I am altogether stepping out of the ordinary professional course, Miss Tracy," replied the barrister; "but I have thought it better to see you myself rather than trust the task to another, in order to ascertain the nature of the evidence you can give; first, for the purpose of judging whether it will be expedient to call you at all on the part of my friend Winslow; and secondly, that I may so direct the questions to be put to you in your examination in chief as to prevent the cross-examining counsel from torturing you, or damaging the case of my client. Winslow tells me that he was speaking with you the moment before he quitted the garden. Now mind, in anything I say, my dear young lady, I wish to suggest nothing; for, in the first place, I am sure you are incapable of falsehood; and in the next, nothing can serve our friend but the simple truth."
"But that is quite true," said Rose, "he was speaking with me near a little basin of gold and silver fish, close by the spot where the body was afterwards found. He then ran across the path and the greensward beyond, and jumped over the hedge just above the haw-haw. I can show you the precise spot."