“Shall I tell you what Mr. Bruce told me, Jack?” he at length asked.
The man nodded, and, by the light of the moon, his companion saw a gray pallor settle over his face, which seemed to have grown almost rigid in its outlines.
Geoffrey began by telling him how Mrs. Bruce had gone over to borrow some tea of Mrs. Henly, the day following Jack’s flight; how she knocked and there came no response, when she stepped into the kitchen and found Margery lying on the floor, and becoming so frightened at the sight, she had turned and fled back to her home, with hardly more than a glance at the prostrate woman.
“Farmer Bruce,” he went on, “at once went back to your house, taking his son and a hired man with him. They lifted Margery and laid her on her bed, and then John Bruce rode off with all his might after a doctor——”
“Doctor! What could they want of a doctor?—a coroner, ye mean,” interrupted Jack, in a thick, hoarse voice.
“No, a doctor, Jack—she needed one; she didn’t need a coroner.”
“Ha!”
The man started wildly to his feet as the hoarse cry burst from him; then he sank back again, pressing his hands hard against his temples and staring about him in a half-dazed way, as if he had not comprehended what he had heard.
“Master Geoffrey, don’t—don’t tell me no more,” he pleaded, in an agonized tone. “I can’t bear it; they didn’t need any doctor to tell them that she was dead—just tell me where to find her grave. I’ll go and take one look at it; then I’ll make tracks again for Australia; I can’t stop here.”
The man’s tone was so despairing, his attitude so hopeless, and his words so heart-broken, that Geoffrey had hard work to preserve his own composure.