At the same time, the probabilities were immensely against the baronet's having voluntarily undertaken any expedition, considering the circumstances under which he must have set out—on foot, fatigued, and at so late an hour. If secrecy had been his object, it would have been far more easily secured by his departure at a less extraordinary time. In the meanwhile, day after day passed by without any tidings, and the mystery of his disappearance deepened and spread. Mr. Long was rather reserved upon the matter at first, professing to entertain little doubt that the wilful Squire would presently return, malicious and grim as ever; but as time went on, he began to grow uneasy, and seemed to find relief in conversing upon the subject, and suggesting more or less impossible contingencies.
"Do you remember, Peter," said he one morning at breakfast-time, "reading out to me, some months ago, an account of the murder of a certain lieutenant of the coast-guard by smugglers on the east coast; how he oppressed them and treated them with unnecessary cruelty for many, many months, until at last they took him away out of his bed by force, and carried him no man knew whither, and put him to death with tortures?"
"Yes," returned I, "perfectly well. They buried the poor wretch up to his neck in the sea-sand, and bowled stones at his head."
"Well, Peter, that frightful scene is constantly representing itself whenever I shut my eyes; only the head is that of Sir Massingberd. You cannot imagine how distressing it is to me now to go to bed, with the expectation of this re-enacting itself before I can get to sleep."
"Dear me, how dreadful!" returned I. "But does not the fact of your only recognizing the victim, convince you of the unreality of the thing? If you knew the faces of the smugglers, then indeed——"
"I do know them, Peter," interrupted my tutor gravely; "that is the worst of it; although it should, as you say, rather convince me of the imaginary character of the scene, since the actors in it have long been dead and gone, I believe. They are not smugglers, but gipsies. There is on Carew in particular, one unhappy man, into whose history I need not enter, but who once incurred the baronet's vengeance, and I am afraid it is but too likely perished in consequence. It is a sad story of deception on both sides; but it is certain that Sir Massingberd richly earned the hatred of the wandering people. I have no right, of course, to make any such charge, but Peter, I cannot help thinking that it is they who have made away with the Squire. I casually inquired in the village yesterday about the tribe that generally inhabit the fir-grove on the Crittenden Road, and it seems they left the place by night, on or about the very date of Sir Massingberd's disappearance."
My heart grew cold and heavy as a stone at these words, delivered though they were with vagueness, and without any threat of action to follow them, for the suspicion which my tutor now suggested had long ago taken firm root in my own mind. I would not, however, have given expression to it upon any account, and my present wish was to do away with this notion of the rector's as much as possible. I would not, perhaps, have assisted in the escape of the Cingari from punishment, if punishment they deserved, but neither would I have put out my hand to deliver them up. The law had taken its wicked will of them often enough already, and in connection with this very man.
"Those who know these people best," said I, "such as Bradford and the keepers, do not think it at all probable that they would have had the courage to face Sir Massingberd. Even if they possessed it, what could they have done but have slain him? and if slain, where have they put him to?"
"God alone knows," said my tutor solemnly; "but the man at the pike at Crittenden says, I believe, that they had a covered cart with them, which they have never been known to have before."
I murmured something to the effect that the winter was coming on, and that it was likely enough that they should have procured for themselves some peripatetic shelter of that kind; but a nameless horror took hold upon me, in spite of myself, when Mr. Long rejoined, that he should think it his duty to have the gipsies followed, and a thorough examination of their effects to be made. I had not another word to say. I seemed already to see poor old Rachel Liversedge standing in the felon's dock, avowing and glorying in her guilt, and defiant of the sentence which would consign her and hers to the same fate that had overtaken, with no such justice, Stanley Carew. Any hope of escape for them, I knew, was out of the question. They had not the means for speedy travel, while, in those days of superstition and intolerance, the Cingari were an object of animadversion and alarm, whithersoever they moved. That very day—acting upon information received concerning their present whereabouts—Mr. Long set out on horseback, accompanied by the parish constable, and Came up with the party whom he sought upon a certain common within twenty miles of Fairburn. The tribe, of whom I had only seen three grown-up members, were tolerably numerous, and the constable evinced his fitness for being a peace-officer by counselling the rector to do nothing rash, at least until reinforcements should permit of his doing so with safety. The sight, however, of the covered cart, placed, as it seemed, jealously in the very centre of the encampment, was too much for Mr. Long, who, to do him justice, was as bold as a lion, except where conventional "position," as in the case of Sir Massingberd, made him indisposed for action. He turned his horse straight for the desired object, in spite of the threatening looks of several men, who were tinkering about an immense fire, and was only stopped by the youngest of them starting up, and laying his hand imperatively upon his bridle-rein.