"Oh! Why, have you just come down?" exclaimed Grace, delighted to find a fresh auditor for the awful tale that she seemed really to enjoy relating. "Why, you must know that last night, a man coming from Norbury, late in the evening, discovered the body of Dr. Hugh lying at the entrance of a wood about four miles from the village, stabbed in four or five places, and quite cold. His horse and gig were tied to a tree close by, and the footprints on the ground beside where the body was found, show that the poor wretch did not yield to his murderer without a desperate struggle. His hands were"——
"You are making it unnecessarily horrible," said Mr. Rutledge, sternly, and starting forward, placed a chair for me, and poured out a glass of water.
"Why, she's going to faint!" exclaimed Ella Wynkar, staring at me with her dull, blue eyes, while Mrs. Churchill came forward ejaculating,
"What is the matter? Are you ill?"
"It is not at all strange that she should be shocked at hearing such a thing so suddenly," answered Mr. Rutledge for me. "You must remember, Miss Grace, we all had it more gradually: first my suspicions, then Thomas' report, then the morning paper; which is very different from hearing it all at a breath, and without any warning."
Mr. Rutledge tried to divert them from the theme, and save me from the faintness which his quick eye detected at each new disclosure or conjecture, but in vain. Nothing else could be thought or spoken of. How the murderer should be hunted down, what blood-thirsty and revengeful men were already on the track, how impossible was his escape; these were the pleasant topics of the morning Within those two hours I learned more self-command than all my previous life had taught me, for I had an awful dread at my heart, and I had to listen to these things, as if I were very indifferent to them.
Phil said, for the honor of the county, he supposed, Mr. Rutledge would do all in his power to ferret the thing out; and Mr. Rutledge rather reluctantly assented, and said he supposed it was his duty.
"And," added the captain, "from what you've said of some slight clue you thought you had to guide you, I suppose you may be of great service, and it's every man's duty to bring the perpetrator of such a deed to justice. By Jove! I wish I could help it along!"
"I suppose you are right," said Mr. Rutledge, with a sigh. "I am going to ride over to the court-house now. Thomas, has my horse been brought around?"
"He is at the door now, sir," said Thomas.