“Stop,” interrupted the coroner; “there was a young woman in the house, you say.”
“Yes; what I call a young woman, or a gal like; though other some calls her a young woman. Waal, she was got out; and her clothes was got out; but nobody could get out the old folks. As soon as the ingyne come up we turned on the water, and that put out the fire about the quickest. Arter that we went to diggin’, and soon found what folks call the remains, though to my notion there is little enough on ’em that is left.”
“You dug out the remains,” said the coroner, writing; “in what state did you find them?”
“In what I call a pretty poor state; much as you see ’em there, on the table.”
“What has become of the young lady you have mentioned?” enquired the coroner, who, as a public functionary, deemed it prudent to put all of the sex into the same general category.
“I can’t tell you, ’squire; I never see’d her arter she was got out of the window.”
“Do you mean that she was the hired-girl of the family,—or had the old lady no help?”
“I kinder think she was a boarder, like; one that paid her keepin’,” answered the witness, who was not a person to draw very nice distinctions, as the reader will have no difficulty in conceiving, from his dialect. “It seems to me I heer’n tell of another help in the Goodwin family—a sorter Jarman, or Irish lady.”
“Was any such woman seen about the house this morning, when the ruins were searched?”
“Not as I’ner. We turned over the brands and sticks, until we come across the old folks; then everybody seemed to think the work was pretty much done.”