“The clock of the old church at Hampstead sounds clearly across the fields.”
“At Hampstead,” muttered Gray, gazing earnestly around him, for he was as ignorant as possible of the locality in which he rightly surmised he had been left by those who had eased him of all his wealth.
“Yes, there’s the church peeping among the tree, sir,” added the man.
“I know it well,” said Gray, “my family all lie buried in its humble graveyard.”
“Oh, indeed, sir,” said the man, and then he went with a slow step towards a tree, and taking a little tin can and a brush from his pocket, he began lathering it with paste.
Gray watched his proceedings with intense curiosity, for he could not surmise what he could possibly be about to do. All wonder and conjecture were, however, speedily set at rest, for the man took a large printed bill from his hat, and the first word that struck Jacob Gray was the awful and ominous one of “Murder” in large letters on the top.
The man pasted the bill on to the trunk of the tree carefully and evenly, and then he paused for a moment, and in a low, mumbling voice, read it.
Jacob Gray was in such a position that he could not see the smaller print of the bill with sufficient distinctness to read it. The one word at the top—murder, only came out strongly and clearly to his eyes. That the placard concerned him, he never for a moment doubted, and now his agony became intense, at the thought that the man was most probably then engaged in mentally concerning his Gray’s, personal appearance, with a description of him in the bill.
His anxiety while the man was reading became so intense, that he could neither speak nor move, and it was not until the man turned to him, and said,—
“A horrid murder, sir, it seems,” that he found breath to answer him, in a confused manner.