“Don’t be afeard, Mrs. Devlin, ma’am. Speak up to the sergeant when he asks you the question. It’s for your own good that he’s trying to get the truth out of you.”
“I won’t,” said Mrs. Devlin at last, “be telling lies to you. He had not. There wasn’t a sign of it on him, though I won’t deny that he might have had a glass of porter or the like.”
“And did he spent the night with you in the house?”
“He did—he did,” wailed Mrs. Devlin, overcome afresh by the recollection. “And in the morning, as it might be yesterday morning, when he had his breakfast took, ‘I’m off,’ says he, ‘up to the Castle,’ says he, ‘to see the old lord that always was a good friend to me and my father before me.’ And I never seen him since.”
“Did he go to the Castle?” asked the sergeant.
“How would I know whether he did or not? Amn’t I after telling you that I was sick in my bed?”
“He did go,” said a man from the crowd, “for I seen him getting over the wall into the deer park, and him looking most determined, the same as if he had business to do.”
“And why didn’t you come up and tell me before?” said the sergeant. “He’s gone for twenty-four hours and more, and it’s only now you find it out.”
“I was expecting him to step into the house every minute,” said Mrs. Devlin, “and I wasn’t willing to lay my mind down to it that he was gone, till there was no help for it.”