"I do not need to look nearer, Sir," replied Chandos, gazing firmly on the corpse; "it is the body of poor Mr. Roberts, the late Sir Harry Winslow's agent--as good a man as ever lived."
"Did he find you in the garden?" asked Mr. Tracy.
"No, Sir," replied Chandos; "I quitted the garden after speaking a few words to Miss Rose Tracy, by the basin, as she was feeding the gold-fish."
"That must have been very nearly at the time he was seeking you," said Mr. Tracy. "I saw him cross the lawn, and I saw my daughter return about ten minutes afterwards. Did you quit the garden immediately after you saw her?"
"Immediately," answered Chandos.
"Do you know whose hoe that is?" inquired Mr. Tracy, pointing to the one that lay by the dead man.
"Mine, Sir," replied Chandos at once; "I left it leaning against the pillar." And, taking it up, he added, as he looked at it, "The murder must have been committed with this."
"Leave it there," said Mr. Tracy. "Pray what did Mr. Roberts want with you?"
"Of that I can have no notion, Sir," was the young gentleman's reply. "I did not even know that he had been seeking me, till you informed me of the fact just now." He saw that some suspicion was beginning to attach itself to him; but Chandos Winslow was not a man to suffer himself to feel personal alarm easily, and he remained so calm and self-possessed, that Mr. Tracy felt that some vague doubts which he had entertained had done him injustice.
"This affair," he said, at lengthy "is as strange as terrible, and must be immediately inquired into further. Taylor, you remain here with one of the men till the constable can be brought up from the village. Then give the body and the hoe into his charge, and render him every assistance he may require; but nothing must be taken away or altered till the coroner, to whom I shall write immediately, arrives. Let everybody, too, avoid the spot where the crime was committed, in order that any traces which may perhaps be apparent to-morrow, though we have not been able to find them to-night, may not be effaced."