“Don’t go through Thurston Wood!” said Philip, running up to him in hot haste.
The ex-farmer, slightly muddled by too long a halt at “The Plough,” did not catch the drift of his expression, but understood him to oppose his passage through the park. Under the influence of a little Dutch courage, he laid hold on Philip to repel what he imagined was a personal attack. A short scuffle succeeded, during which the gun fell to the ground and was seized by Piggy Morris. Philip succeeded in removing his apprehension, and the gun was being handed back, when Morris suddenly exclaimed,—
“This is our Jack’s gun, as sure as eggs is eggs! How have you come by that?”
Philip hastily told him what he had seen. Morris listened, thoroughly sobered now, and laying his hand on the young man’s shoulder, he hissed between his set teeth,—
“My son Jack is murdered! The son of the man who turned me off my farm, the Philip Fuller that robbed my lad of his sweetheart, and that threatened him before witnesses, is the man that did the deed!”
Shocked, stunned, paralysed at the awful imputation, and at the damning circumstantial evidence forthcoming, at that moment Philip looked guilty, and Piggy Morris’s suspicions were confirmed.
“I’m not going to lose sight of you, young man,” said Morris, and despite the solemn denial of the distressed and confounded youth, Piggy Morris insisted on accompanying his “prisoner,” as he called him, to Waverdale Hall. There the young man told his story to his father. With a heart oppressed by forbodings of calamity, the squire and a posse of servants accompanied them to Thurston Wood. While Philip had been telling his story, Morris had noted the mire on his shooting jacket and the blood upon his cuffs, and pointed them out to the squire with more exultation than was befitting a bereaved father. Piggy Morris, however, had not any great amount of affection for his son. They found the cap, which Morris identified at once, and one of the servants, picking up a gun, exclaimed, “Why, this is Master Philip’s gun!” A hush as of death fell upon the party, broken first by a groan from the agonised squire, then Piggy Morris seized Philip by the arm, and dragging him to his father’s presence, cried, “Behold the murderer of my son!”
“Hands off!” shouted Philip, stung beyond endurance, “It’s a hideous lie!”
“Peace! my son,” said the squire, in accents which thrilled every listener, by their concentrated grief and resolute dignity. “Mr. Morris, you know where to find my son when he is wanted, and now, good-night!”
A heavy cloud rested on all who dwelt within the mansion of Waverdale. The servants of the establishment, from butler to stable-boy, from housekeeper to scullery-maid, entertained a true affection and regard for their kind-hearted and open-handed young master, and one and all were in genuine distress. Squire Fuller, in a long and anxious conference with his son, in which his own first agonising doubts were removed and Philip’s innocence of the dreadful charge made clear to himself, sat by his waning lamp far into the night. He was in sad straits. The events of the morning, when he had threatened to disinherit his boy, and now this new and grievous trouble, bowed his spirit to the ground. His son’s erratic and mortifying connection with the Methodists, the awfully damning evidence against him as to the dark deed of Thurston Wood, the humiliating publicity which would drag his honoured name through the mire of disgrace: these things, coupled with the deep, strong love he had for Philip, stung his soul to the quick. He had discarded religion, had imbibed a strong unbelief in and contempt for prayer, and yet such is the native instinct of the soul to cry unto the Lord in distress, that he could not refrain from groaning aloud, “Lord, save my boy!” Thus the hours passed, until, worn-out and weary, he slumbered in his chair. Waking as the grey light of morning peeped through the heavy window curtains, he rose with a bitter sigh and sought his chamber. Passing Philip’s bedroom door, he paused as he heard a voice within, “Don’t! father, don’t! Dear father! Lucy, my darling! Farewell! Adam Olliver, you have given me a Saviour! Give me a father! What’s this? Blood! Morris! I didn’t do it! Oh! oh! oh!”