"You must leave your horse behind, then, also," said the boy, in the same low tone, "if you want to see the Captain as you used to do; for he will never let us find him if he sees any one coming on horseback."
"That I will do willingly," replied Langford; and throwing the bridle to one of the men, he bade them remain there till he returned.
Holding the boy Jocelyn by the hand, he then went out upon the hill side, questioning him as they walked along, with regard to Franklin Gray; but before he would answer anything, the boy made him again and again promise that he would not betray his master. When he was satisfied on that point, he gazed up in Langford's face, with a look of deep and anxious sadness, saying, "Oh, you don't know all, Captain Langford! You don't know all!"
"Yes, my good boy, I do," replied Langford; "I have heard all the sad story of the people going to attack your master in his house, and his fancying that his wife had betrayed him, and shooting the person he loved best on earth."
"Ay, poor thing, she is happy!" said the boy; "I am sure she is in heaven, for every day since they laid her in the churchyard, I have strewed what flowers I could get, upon her grave, and they do not wither there half so soon as they do anywhere else. But I am sure it is better for her to be there than to see her husband in such a state as he is now."
"What do you mean, Jocelyn?" demanded Langford. "Grief and remorse for what he has done must, I dare say, have had a terrible effect upon your master; but you seem to imply something more. What is it that you mean?"
"Alas," replied the boy, "he is mad; quite mad. That is what made Harvey and the rest leave him, for they found him out after he got away and joined him again; but, both for his sake and their own, they were obliged to separate, when they found what state he was in. But I am sure he had been mad some time before, for the day after that wicked man made his escape, who brought all the people upon us, I saw him on the hill fire one of his pistols in the air, as if he had been shooting at something, though there was nothing to be seen: and when he had done he looked at the pistol and said, 'You are not so dangerous now.' But now he is quite wild, and you must take care how you go near him, for it is a thousand to one that he fires at you, and you know he never misses his mark."
"Whereabouts is he?" demanded Langford. "I wonder he has not been discovered."
"Oh, he is two or three miles off, at least," replied the boy; "in the rocky part of the hills near the sea. He comes here about night, when he goes to the grave in the churchyard, and moans over it; but then before daylight he is away again."
Langford and the boy walked on, but the two or three miles he spoke of proved to be fully five, and during the last mile the scenery became wild and rugged in the extreme. The turf, which had covered the hills further inland with a smooth though undulating surface, was here constantly broken by immense masses of rock, sometimes taking the form of high banks and promontories, with the tops still soft and grassy; sometimes starting abruptly up in fantastic groups out of the ground, like the rugged and misshapen columns of some druidical temple. Here and there a few scattered birch trees varied the scene, and near a spot where a spring of clear water broke from the ground, and wandered down in a stream into the valley, some fine oaks had planted themselves, sheltered by a higher ridge of the hill from the sharp winds of the sea.