Mr. Arden put on his spectacles, and after gazing for a moment or two at the prisoner, he turned towards Lord Dewry, and said, "My lord, will your lordship be good enough to state the charge against this man; as of course that part of the business referring to the murder of your son must be dropped, since it fortunately turns out that he is alive. There are, however, I think, still two serious charges to be disposed of, and probably our best plan will be to examine into them separately: by separately, I mean, distinct from each other, though, as many of us have come some distance, we had better go into both ere we depart."
Lord Dewry paused for several minutes ere he replied; and looked over some papers which he had laid upon the table before him; but in truth a momentary feeling of doubt and embarrassment crossed his mind. He had determined most positively to urge against the gipsy the death of his brother; he had arranged all his plans for that purpose; he had matured them perfectly; he had secured, as far as human ingenuity could go, every link of the chain; and nothing remained but to cast it boldly round his victim; and yet, at the very moment of execution, a doubt and apprehension, a sort of prophetic hesitation, seemed to seize him, and he wished that it had been possible to abandon the charge of the murder of his predecessor, and to confine his accusation to the deer-stealing and the death of Sir Roger Millington, which was now, as he well knew, so near, as to effect all that could be wished, by rendering the charge against Pharold capital.
He wavered for a moment, then, but he saw that the very wish to give up an accusation so boldly made would appear suspicious, if any one discovered it; and turning to Mr. Arden with a faint smile, he asked, "With which of these charges had I better commence, my dear sir? The one which is susceptible of the most immediate proof is that referring to the recent offence."
"No, no, my lord," replied the magistrate, "take them in the order of their dates. Let us get rid of the ancient business before we begin the other. 'Tis well to be off with the old love before we be on with the new, my lord."
"As you think fit," answered the peer, somewhat disappointed at the magistrate's decision, but determined, as he must proceed, to proceed boldly. "Well, then, my charge is as follows:--that the prisoner Pharold, now before you, did, on the 18th day of May, in the year 17--, feloniously and with malice aforethought put to death my unfortunate brother, the late Lord Dewry, in or near that part of the road from Morley village to Green Hampton, which crosses the wood called Morley Wood; and I am now ready to produce sufficient evidence to induce you to commit the prisoner to the county jail for trial."
While he spoke, the gipsy's eye rested on him with a glance so stern, so keen, so searching, that he felt as if the dreadful secret of his bosom--all its motives and all its feelings, its doubts, its apprehensions, its remorse, its complicated plans and subtle contrivances, were undergoing, one by one, the examination of that dark, fixed regard. Though he looked towards the prisoner as little as possible, yet the gipsy's eye was a load upon him, that oppressed and would have confused a less powerful mind than his own. Even as it was, however, he could not bear it without emotion, and turning abruptly to Mr. Arden, he went on,--"I trust, Mr. Arden, that you have brought with you the notes of the former examination."
"Everything! everything, my lord," replied the magistrate; "prepared as I was for the case, I brought every memorandum that could at all bear upon it; and I think my clerk had better read the depositions made at the time, and then you can proceed with any new facts which may have since come to your knowledge."
The peer bowed his head, and the clerk, under Mr. Arden's instructions, proceeded to read a variety of documents relating to facts with which the reader is already acquainted. It is unnecessary, therefore, to repeat them; but the demeanour of the two persons principally interested in the details was in itself sufficiently singular to attract the attention of some of the magistrates, though, if they sought in their own minds for the motives, they were mistaken in the conclusions at which they arrived. During the reading of all the formal and immaterial part of the depositions, the gipsy remained with his eyes fixed upon the ground, and his head slightly bent, with the aspect of one who hears a thing with all the details of which he is too familiar to give it any deep attention. But when the clerk came to his own deposition, and read the declaration which he had made of having seen the murder committed, and marked the murderer so particularly as to be able to swear to him if he ever saw him again, his lip curled with a bitter and a biting sneer, and, raising his head, he fixed his eyes upon his accuser, with a gaze that might well have sunk him to the earth.
Lord Dewry, however, encountered not his glance. He felt that the gipsy's look must be then upon him; and, though he kept his own eyes steadfastly on the papers before him, he turned deadly pale under the consciousness of his own guilt, and the knowledge of what must be passing in the bosom of the innocent man he had accused.
"This is your declaration, made twenty years ago, prisoner!" said Mr. Arden, examining the gipsy's countenance through his spectacles.