"I! You silly child!" he returned, in an accent of rebuke. "What in the world put that in your head? I have been looking for Philip King—waiting here in the hope that he might pass. There, go along, child, and don't tremble so. That way: you are coming from the house, this."
Back I went, my fears increasing. To an imaginative, excitable, and timid nature, such as mine, all this was simply terrible. I did gain the house, but only to rush into the arms of Jemima, who happened to be in the hall, and fall into a fit of hysterical, nervous, sobbing cries, clinging to her tightly, as if I could never let her go again.
A pretty messenger, truly, in time of need!
CHAPTER III.
GOING OUT IN THE FOG.
Help had arrived from another quarter. A knot of labourers on the estate, going home from work, happened to choose the road through the wood, and Mr. Edwin Barley heard them.
One of them, a young man they called Duff, was at the house almost as soon as I. He came into the hall, and saw me clinging to Jemima. Nothing could have stopped my threatened fit of hysterics so effectually as an interruption. Duff told his tale. The young heir had been shot in the wood, he said. "Shot dead!"
"The young heir!" cried Jemima, with a cry. She was at no loss to understand who was meant: it was what Philip King had been mostly styled since his brother's death. Charlotte Delves came forward as Duff was speaking. Duff took off his felt hat in deference to her, and explained.
She turned as white as a sheet—white as George Heneage had looked—and sat down on a chair. Duff had not mentioned George Heneage's name, only Mr. Edwin Barley's: perhaps she thought it was the latter who had fired the shot.
"It must have been an accident, Duff. They are so careless with their guns!"
"No, ma'am, it was murder! Leastways, that's what they are saying."