Blase had answered readily, and with much appearance of earnestness. The coroner was conscious that dim doubts of Mr. Blase Pellet's strict veracity were floating in his own mind, chiefly arising from his incredulity as to dreams; but the doubts were not sufficient to act upon, neither did he perceive that they could be in any way supported. So he released the witness. And the inquest came to an end, the jury returning an open verdict—
"That Josiah Bell met with his death through falling down the pit; but that what caused his fall there was no evidence to show."
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
A SUBTLE ENEMY
"He never went near the pit of his own free will! He was lured to it and thrown into it. Or he was first killed, and then cruelly put there out of the way."
The speaker was Mrs. Bell: who had at last assumed the widow's dress and cap. Her audience consisted of her daughter Rosaline, the Aunt Pellet from Falmouth, Blase Pellet, and two or three neighbours. The aunt and Rosaline had arrived from Falmouth to attend the funeral. Rosaline, at first, had absolutely refused to come; she "felt afraid," she said, with much trembling and many bitter tears; she did not like to look upon the dead, even though it was her poor father: and she also felt too ill to travel. But John Pellet and his wife overruled these objections. They told her it was an "unnatural state of feeling;" one that might not be indulged: and the aunt, who was coming to Trennach herself, brought Rosaline with her, partly by persuasion, partly by force.
Her plea of illness might indeed have been allowed. Thin, white, worn, with a manner that seemed to be for ever starting at shadows, Rosaline looked little like the gay and blooming girl once known to Trennach. Trennach gazed at her with amazed eyes, wondering what Falmouth could have done to her in that short period, or whether the Seven Whistlers, which had so startled her at home, could have followed her to that populous town. Sitting in her mother's kitchen, her back to the light, her cheek resting on her hand, Rosaline listened in silence to the conversation, two of the company especially regarding her—Blase Pellet and Nancy Tomson. Nancy openly avowed that she had never seen any young woman so changed in her life; while Blase Pellet, though mentally acknowledging the change, was taking in draughts of her wondrous beauty.
"No living body of men have queerer fancies than miners, especially these Cornish miners: and poor Josiah, though he was not Cornish at all, as we know, had his," pursued Dame Bell, chiefly addressing her sister, a tall, thin woman, who had arrived fashionably attired in crape and bombazine, with a veil to her bonnet. Not that she wore her bonnet now, for this was the next morning, and the day of the funeral.
"Hardly a man about here would venture close up to that shaft at night: and if you go out and ask them one by one, Sarah, you'll find I am telling you nothing but truth," pursued the widow. "Since Dan Sandon threw himself headlong in, and was killed, the men won't go near it for fear of seeing him. Neither would Bell; and——"
"Perhaps he fell into it accidentally, Ann," interrupted Mrs. Pellet.