"Who are you?" he asked sternly: "and what has brought you here?"
The Indian officer had been aroused by the clamour, and had emerged, red and bristling with self-importance, to take his part in the business in hand.
There are some pies in the making of which everybody yearns to have a finger. It is a great privilege, after some social convulsion has taken place, to be able to say, "I was there at the time the scene occurred, sir;" or, "I was standing as close to him when the blow was struck, ma'am, as I am to you at this moment." People are apt to take pride out of strange things. An elderly gentleman at Doncaster, showing me his comfortably-furnished apartments, informed me, with evident satisfaction, that Mr. William Palmer had lodged in those very rooms.
Colonel Maddison pushed aside his daughter and her husband, and struggled out into the hall.
"Come, my man," he said, echoing John's interrogatory, "let us hear what has brought you here at such a remarkably unseasonable hour."
The sailor gave no direct answer to the question. He pointed with his thumb across his shoulder towards that dismal spot in the lonely wood, which was as present to his mental vision now as it had been to his bodily eyes a quarter of an hour before.
"A man!" he gasped; "a man—lyin' close agen' the water's edge,—shot through the heart!"
"Dead?" asked some one, in an awful tone. The voices and the questions came from whom they would, in the awe-stricken terror of those first moments of overwhelming horror and surprise. No one knew who spoke except the speakers; perhaps even they were scarcely aware that they had spoken.
"Dead?" asked one of those eager listeners.
"Stone dead."