Not so. A slight noise made me look up. Who should be standing near, his back against a tree, smoking a cigar and smiling at me, but Philip King.
"What is the grief, Miss Anne? Have you met a wolf?"
"I can't find my way out, sir."
"Oh, I'll soon show you that. We are almost close to the south border. You——"
He stopped suddenly, turned his head, and looked attentively in a direction to the left. At that moment there came a report, something seemed to whizz through the air, and strike Philip King. He leaped up, and then fell to the ground with a scream. This was followed so instantly that it seemed to be part and parcel of the scream, by a distant exclamation of dismay or of warning. From whom did it come?
Though not perfectly understanding what had occurred, or that Philip King had received a fatal shot, I screamed also, and fell on my knees; not fainting, but with a sick, horrible sensation of fear, such as perhaps no child ever before experienced. And the next thing I saw was Mr. Edwin Barley, coming towards us with his gun, not quite from the same direction as the shot, but very near it. I had been thinking that George Heneage must have done it, but another question arose now to my terrified heart: Could it have been Mr. Edwin Barley?
"Philip, what is it?" he asked, as he came up. "Has any one fired at you?"
"George Heneage," was the faint rejoinder. "I saw him. He stood there."
With a motion of the eyes, rather than with aught else, poor Philip King pointed to the left, and Mr. Edwin Barley turned and looked, laying his gun against a tree. Nothing was to be seen.
"Are you sure, Philip?"