"I don't say but he might have done so. If he was at the edge of the pit, looking down, or anything of that sort, he might have overbalanced himself. But I do say that he was not there alone. I ask what took him there at all; and I ask who was with him?"
Pertinent questions. Rosaline, chancing to look up, met the gaze of Blase Pellet. Each started slightly, and dropped their eyes, as though to look at one another were a crime.
"Let us put it down as an accident; for argument's sake," urged the widow. "That he was too close to the pit's mouth, and fell in. It might have been so. But in that ease, I repeat, he was not alone. At least one man must have been with him—perhaps more than one. Why did he, or they, not give the alarm? Why did he not come straight away, and say, 'Poor Bell has fallen into the shaft, and what's to be done?' Can any of you answer me that question?"
"It stands to reason that that's what anybody would do," observed Mrs. Pellet. "But who could have been with him?"
"Not waun o' tha men owns to it," put in Nancy Tomson. "What should heve taaken 'em up to that there ghashly shaaft at night, they aal ask; or Bell either?"
"No, not one owns to it; and, as far as I can see, there was nothing to take them there," assented Mrs. Bell. "Therefore I say it was no accident. Bell was just carried there, living or dead, and put away out o' sight."
"What shall you do about it?" asked Mrs. Pellet, in a scared tone.
"What can I do but wait? Wait until some disclosure turns up."
"If it never does turn up."
"But it will turn up," confidently asserted Dame Bell.