"Come down this little path, sir," said the gipsy. "Under that bank, with those bushes round us, about thirty yards down, we can find shelter, and can see every thing around, so that there will be no fear of interruption."
De Vaux followed as he desired, and in a few minutes reached the spot to which he had pointed. There, upon a felled oak, which only remained to be rolled down the hill, he seated himself on a little piece of level ground, where some one had endeavoured ineffectually to establish a quarry, and whence he could behold the village near his aunt's dwelling and the top of Morley House itself, though the view up the valley on the other side was interrupted by the sweep of the woody hill. The gipsy stood beside him, and De Vaux anxiously besought him to produce at once the proofs of the very painful assertions which his letter had contained.
"I brought you not here without an object, Edward de Vaux," said the gipsy, still standing; "for here I can relate my tale better than anywhere else. Now, tell me what you remember of your early years, and what you have heard of your father's history--of his history and that of his family."
"I did not seek you," answered De Vaux, "to tell you what I myself know, but to learn from you facts with which I am unacquainted. You have made assertions, and you must either support them by proof, or let them fall to the ground."
"Well, well," said the gipsy, "be as cautious as you will! If you hesitate to tell the story you have heard, I will tell it for you, Captain de Vaux, as I know you have heard it, and stop me if I speak a word that is false. Your grandfather, the twelfth Lord Dewry, left two sons and one daughter, then nearly seventeen. His eldest son, who was about six-and-twenty, succeeded to his title; and his second son, Edward, your father, who was then at college, went soon after to London to study for the bar. They were both as handsome men as you could look upon; and of your father's life and conduct in the great capital, as I know nothing with much certainty, so shall I say but little--"
"But it appears to me," interrupted De Vaux, "that such is the very matter on which you are called to speak. I was born in London; and if you can tell me nothing certain of my father's conduct in London, you can tell me nothing to the purpose."
"Patience! patience, sir, I pray you!" replied the gipsy; "I can tell you much, though on your father's conduct in London I will spare you as far as may be. William Lord Dewry, your uncle, was one of those men such as the world seldom sees; full of fine and generous feelings, kind, forgiving, noble, with enthusiasm such as the cold call folly, and humanity such as the unfeeling term weakness, though the rectitude of his own conduct was as unbending as yonder oak, and his enthusiasm never led him to aught but what was just and good. For some years after he succeeded to the title, he remained unmarried, and it was generally supposed that he would continue to live as a single man. Those who knew him better, however, felt sure that if ever chance should throw in his way a woman who deserved his love, whose heart was full of such feelings as his own, and whose mind was stored with thoughts and wishes as high and noble as those which filled his own bosom, he would not only offer to join his fate to hers, but would love her as woman has seldom been loved on earth; that such a woman, so loved, would become the great object of his being and his life, and would concentrate on herself all those deep and ardent affections which from his boyhood he had shown that his heart possessed. He did at length, as you well know, find such a woman--full of all those qualities which were so bright in himself--beautiful, accomplished, and his equal in rank and fortune. He addressed himself at once to a heart that was free and unengaged; and the same fine properties that had won his love were sure to win her love for him. He was married, and was happy beyond all that he had ever dreamed. He was happy; nay, more, he was content! for the angel of his home was more than all he had expected, and he sought and wished for nothing more. Every feeling, every thought turned towards her; and though his kindness, his benevolence, his philanthropy, were doubled rather than diminished, yet no joy was any thing to the joy of his love. For a year and six months he was as happy as any human thing can be--happier, perhaps, than any human thing ever was before. I saw his happiness; and, oh! how it made my heart expand to behold it! But then suddenly came a change. His wife had given him a child--beautiful, I hear she is, as her mother and good as her father; but ere the opening of her infant mind could add anything to the happiness of her parents, or afford even a momentary consolation to her father when distress came, her mother was seized with sudden illness, and ere five days were over she was dead."
The gipsy paused, and seemed to sigh bitterly over the memories of the past; while De Vaux, whose interest in all that concerned his beloved Marian was hardly less than he felt for those things that affected himself, waited anxiously to hear more; for though the story was not unfamiliar to him, yet it was put in a new light, and told in a mild and feeling tone, that gave it a thousand times more force than ever. After a moment or two of silence the gipsy went on:--"What a change," he continued, "came upon him then! The world seemed all forgotten. He appeared as one struck with sudden blindness; and where he had beheld nothing but beauty around him before, he now beheld nothing but a blank. For hours and hours he would ride in solitude through the country, unaccompanied even by a servant. He would pass his friends when he met them as strangers, and when they spoke, would seem long ere he remembered them. He forgot all enjoyment and all occupation, and lived in the world as if it were not his proper place. Thus passed the days for near two months, when, at the end of that time, he one morning rode forth as usual alone; but he chanced--though it was seldom he mentioned whither he went--he chanced to say that he was going to the county town. He was known, too, to have a large sum of money on his person; and as he passed by the house of Mrs. Falkland, his sister, for it was at Dimden he always lived, he stopped for a few minutes."
"You seem to know the whole facts as minutely as if you had followed him," said De Vaux, when the gipsy paused for a moment.
"I do," said the gipsy; "and, if you will listen, you shall hear how. When he left Mrs. Falkland's, her husband, who was then living, and a noble, frank-hearted man, walked by his brother-in-law's horse as far as the village, but there he left him, and Lord Dewry rode on. He was seen by some boys who were playing in that field--can you see it? half a mile nearer than the village, with a red barn at the side. But none of the country people saw him after, and he never returned to the hall. His servants, who all loved him, were alarmed, and sent over to Mr. Falkland, and he despatched messengers to the county town, with orders to inquire at the villages on the road; but no Lord Dewry was to be heard of anywhere. The evening passed over in terror; night had come on, and the family of Morley House were retiring late to rest, when a messenger arrived from Mr. Arden the magistrate, to inform Mr. Falkland that a gipsy--do you remark--a gipsy had just been taken up upon the charge of beating a young peasant almost to death the day before, and now made a voluntary declaration that he had seen the Lord Dewry murdered at the elm-point, there down below, that very morning at ten o'clock. Mr. Falkland instantly got upon horseback, and rode over to see Mr. Arden; and it was agreed between them that the news should instantly be sent to the Honourable Edward de Vaux, your father, and that till he arrived nothing further should be asked of the gipsy, except if he knew where the body of Lord Dewry might in any likelihood be found. He said yes: it might be found at the sea; but that if they would search in the reeds by the bank, they would find the baron's hat, and that in some of the woods or meadows his horse would be met with. Search was instantly made, and some of his words proved true; for the hat, pierced through and through with a shot, was found bloody among the reeds, and his horse was discovered grazing in the meadows, four miles down, on the other side of the water. In the mean time, the courier rode night and day to London, and when he arrived, found the dead lord's brother at the playhouse. He was very much shocked at the news, and instantly came down hither with one Sir William Ryder, a good enough man, they said, at heart, but one who had been fond of play, and had lost a fine fortune by that foolish passion. When the new lord arrived, the gipsy was again brought up and placed before him. A great many questions were asked, and he told this story:--The young man he had beaten had foully ill-used a gipsy woman, and he, the gipsy, had punished him, scarcely as he deserved. He had left him for dead, however, on the ground; and thinking that if he were dead the offence might bring trouble on his people, if he went back to them, he hid himself in these woods, and on the morning of the murder was lying down yonder, in the sweep of trees there, just at the head of the point. He had been there all the morning, he said; and, as the country people generally take the short way over the hill, he had seen no one pass, till, about half-past nine o'clock, a man on horseback came and backed in his horse between the two old elm-trees that lie about five hundred yards farther up in the bite of the river. He lay very still there to see what would come of it; and in about half an hour he heard another horse's feet coming quickly up, and Lord Dewry turned the point. The gipsy said that he thought to have sprung out, and told him what he had seen; for his heart misgave him as to the purpose of the other horseman; but just at the moment the other came forth, and, riding quietly up, spoke with Lord Dewry calmly enough for some minutes. They then seemed to get into high dispute, and Lord Dewry pushed his horse on upon the road a little, while following, and speaking at his side, the other suddenly drew a pistol from his pocket, and fired right into the baron's head. At the same moment, as he was falling from the saddle, the horse, taking fright, plunged into the river, dragging him by the stirrup, and his hat fell into the rushes. The other horseman looked after him for a moment; but ere the swimming horse reached the opposite bank, he set spurs to his own beast, and was galloping away, when at the turn he was met by another. The gipsy could see them grasp each other's hands; but they stopped not a moment to speak: the second turned his horse with the first, and both galloped away like lightning. The gipsy plunged into the water, he said, to see if he could bring out the body, as soon as he saw that it had become disentangled from the stirrup; but it had sunk to rise no more; and when he was tired with swimming he returned to the woods.