“What’s the matter now?”
“Why, you sent me into a tremble, gentlemen, saying that,” she answered, stooping to pick up the broken crockery. “A young man lodging in my place, do such a villain’s trick! I’d not like to think it; I shouldn’t rest in my bed. The two servants having started right out from here for the churchyard have cowed-down my heart bad enough, without more ill news.”
“What time did Monk come in last night?” questioned Tod. “Do you remember?”
“He come in after Mrs. Hannah and the other had gone,” she replied, taking a moment’s pause. “Close upon it; I’d hardly shut my door on them when I had to open it to him.”
“Did he go out again?”
“Not he, sir. He eat his supper, telling me in a grumbling tone about the extra work he’d had to do in the greenhouses and places, because the other man had took holiday best part o’ the day. And then he went up to bed. Right tired he seemed.”
We left her fitting the pieces of the basin together, and went home. “It wasn’t Monk,” said Tod. “But now—where to look for the right man, Johnny?”
Look as we might, we did not find him. Phœbe was better in a day or two, but the convulsive fits stuck to her, coming on at all sorts of unexpected times. Old Duff thought it might end in insanity.
And that’s what came of Watching for the Shadows on St. Mark’s Eve!