There were a good many drunken fellows about the town, but there was an end of election demonstrations in the Brandon interest. Captain Lake was not going in for that race; he would be on another errand by the time the writ came down.
CHAPTER LXXIII.
THE MASK FALLS.
There was a 'stop press' that evening in the county paper—'We have just learned that a body has been disinterred, early this afternoon, under very strange circumstances, in the neighbourhood of Gylingden; and if the surmises which are afloat prove well-founded, the discovery will set at rest the speculations which have been busy respecting the whereabouts of a certain gentleman of large property and ancient lineage, who, some time since, mysteriously disappeared, and will, no doubt, throw this county into a state of very unusual excitement. We can state, upon authority, that the coroner will hold his inquest on the body, to-morrow at twelve o'clock, in the town of Gylingden.
There was also an allusion to Captain Lake's accident—with the expression of a hope that it would 'prove but a trifling one,' and an assurance 'that his canvass would not be prevented by it—although for a few days it might not be a personal one. But his friends might rely on seeing him at the hustings, and hearing him too, when the proper time arrived.'
It was quite well known, however, in Gylingden, by this time, that Captain Lake was not to see the hustings—that his spine was smashed—that he was lying on an extemporised bed, still in his clothes, in the little parlour of Redman's Farm—cursing the dead mare in gasps—railing at everybody—shuddering whenever they attempted to remove his clothes—hoping, in broken sentences, that his people would give Bracton and—good licking. Bracton's outrage was the cause of the entire thing—and so help him Heaven, so soon as he should be on his legs again, he would make him feel it, one way or other.
Buddle thought he was in so highly excited a state, that his brain must have sustained some injury also.
He asked Buddle about ten o'clock (having waked up from a sort of stupor)—'what about Jim Dutton?' and then, whether there was not some talk about a body they had found, and what it was. So Buddle told him all that was yet known, and he listened very attentively.
'But Larkin has been corresponding with Mark Wylder up to a very late day, and if this body has been so long buried, how the devil can it be he? And if it be as bodies usually are after such a time, how can anybody pretend to identify it? And I happen to know that Mark Wylder is living,' he added, suddenly.
The doctor told him not to tire himself talking, and offered, if he wished to make a statement before a magistrate, to arrange that one should attend and receive it.