"He came into it again, Miss Rose," said the butler in a sorrowful tone; "his feet were traced straight from the haw-haw, back to the very spot where the dead body was found. Some of his clothes were bloody, too, and those the very clothes he had on last night. The hoe too, with which the poor old man was killed was his; and nobody can deny it is all very suspicious: and so they have sent him off to the county gaol."
"Nonsense! nonsense!" cried Rose; "it was not, it could not be he;" and darting out of the breakfast-room, she entered the adjoining chamber, cast herself into a chair and burst into a violent fit of tears. Then rising suddenly, she threw open the glass doors and walked out into the grounds, as if she were half-crazed, without bonnet or shawl. On she went straight towards the basin where the fatal event had taken place, hurrying forward with a rapid pace, as if in hopes of discovering something which might exculpate her lover. She had passed through the first plantation, which lay within sight of the house, and was then going round by the walk which bordered a little second lawn, among the shrubberies, when she thought she heard a voice near, cry, "Hist! hist!" and turning round, she saw coming out between two of the stone-pines on the other side of the lawn, the gipsey-woman, Sally Stanley.
"Rose! Rose Tracy!" cried the woman; "hark to me, pretty lady; I have something to say to you."
"What is it?" cried Rose, advancing to meet her; "tell me, tell me quickly! I think I shall go mad."
"Amongst the trees, amongst the trees," said the woman, "where nobody can see us; though the gardener-people are all out of the way, revelling, as men always do, over the misfortunes of their fellow-creatures."
The day before, Rose would have been afraid to trust herself alone with that woman among the shrubberies; but anxiety for him she loved had extinguished all personal fear, and with a quick step she led the way into a dark, narrow walk, seldom trodden.
"What is it?" she asked, as soon as they were beneath the boughs; "what have you to tell me?"
"I saw him, as they were putting him into the chaise," said the old woman, with a low voice; "and the constable let me ask him, what was to become of my little boy. I knew what the answer would be well enough; but I thought it would give him the means of speaking a word with me."
"What did he say? what did he say?" cried Rose, totally forgetting in her eagerness how she was committing herself to a stranger, of not the most reputable class of society.
"He said," replied the woman, "that the boy would be taken care of by the General, and then, in a quick whisper, he bade me 'tell her who would be most interested in his fate' not to be alarmed; for he could clear himself in a moment, whenever he chose to speak."