“Yes, Peter is gone—dead and buried—and I hope the sod lies lightly on his remains!” she said, sighing ostentatiously.
“Therein you are mistaken, Mrs. Horton,” the counsellor coolly remarked—“the remains of neither of those found in the ruins of the house are under ground yet; but are kept for the trial.”
“What a time we shall have of it!—so exciting and full of mystery!”
“And you might add ‘custom,’ Mrs. Horton. The reporters alone, who will certainly come from town like an inroad of Cossacks, will fill your house.”
“Yes, and themselves too. To be honest with you, ’Squire Dunscomb, too many of those gentry wish to be kept for nothing to make them pleasant boarders. I dare say, however, we shall be full enough next week. I sometimes wish there was no such thing as justice, after a hard-working Oyer and Terminer court.”
“You should be under no concern, my good Mrs. Horton, on that subject. There is really so little of the thing you have mentioned, that no reasonable woman need make herself unhappy about it. So Peter Goodwin was a faultless man, was he?”
“As far from it as possible, if the truth was said of him; and seeing the man is not absolutely under ground, I do not know why it may not be told. I can respect the grave, as well as another; but, as he is not buried, one may tell the truth. Peter Goodwin was, by no means, the man he seemed to be.”
“In what particular did he fail, my good Mrs. Horton?”
To be good in Dunscomb’s eyes, the landlady well knew, was a great honour; and she was flattered as much by the manner in which the words were uttered, as by their import. Woman-like, Mrs. Horton was overcome by this little bit of homage; and she felt disposed to give up a secret which, to do her justice, had been religiously kept now for some ten or twelve years between herself and her husband. As she and the counsel were alone, dropping her voice a little, more for the sake of appearances than for any sufficient reason, the landlady proceeded.
“Why, you must know, ’Squire Dunscomb, that Peter Goodwin was a member of meetin’, and a professing Christian, which I suppose was all the better for him, seeing that he was to be murdered.”