“Then you have a suspicion there’s been what’s commonly called foul play?”
“More than a suspicion. I’m sure of it.”
“The devil! But who do you suspect?”
“Who should I, but he now in possession of the property—her cousin, Mr Lewin Murdock. Though I’ve reason to believe there are others mixed up in it; one of them a Frenchman. Indeed, it’s chiefly to make inquiry about him I’ve come over to Boulogne.”
“A Frenchman. You know his name?”
“I do; at least that he goes by on the other side of the Channel. You remember that night as we were passing the back entrance of the convent where your sister’s at school, our seeing a carriage there—a hackney, or whatever it was?”
“Certainly I do.”
“And my saying that the man who had just got out of it, and gone inside, resembled a priest I’d seen but a day or two before?”
“Of course I remember all that; and my joking you at the time as to the idleness of you fancying a likeness among sheep; where all are so nearly of the same hue—that black. Something of the sort I said. But what’s your argument?”
“No argument at all, but a conviction, that the man we saw that night was my Herefordshire priest. I’ve seen him several times since—had a good square look at him—and feel sure ’twas he.”