"Why, what is the matter, my lad?" asked Charles, "and where is your old friend Bessy?"
"They have taken her away," replied the boy, "and I am left here alone."
"Taken her away? taken her away?" said Mr. Winkworth, following his young friend. "Who took her away? If your story, Charles, be quite correct, I do not see who can have any right to take her away. Who was it took her away, Jim?"
"Oh! he had right enough, I dare say," answered the boy: "at least, he seemed to have, for he ordered about him quite free, and the people did just what he liked; and when I asked him what was to become of me, he said, 'Whatever might happen. He had nothing to do with that.' He would have been more civil, I think, if he had had no right."
"I can't tell that," replied Mr. Winkworth, who was occasionally given to moralise, as the reader may have perceived: "wrong is often a very uncivil thing; but what was he like? Was he an old man or a young one?"
"Younger than you are, a good bit," replied the boy; "but older than he is, a good bit;" and he pointed to Charles Marston.
Further questions elicited that the person who had carried away poor Miss Hayley was a gentleman between forty and fifty years of age, tall and thin, with grey hair but no whiskers. He had come down in a carriage, the boy said, having a servant with him, and together they had put poor Bessy into the vehicle, whether she would or not.
"She seemed to know him, however," he added, "and called him by his name, and was very much afraid of him. She cried and sobbed very much, too."
In answer to another question, the lad stated that he had forgotten the name which his poor old friend had given to the gentleman.
"The description is uncommonly like my uncle Scriven," said Charles Marston.