Some of the pack did come, before he could be shut up. And there we were—hearing that Robert Ashton had been taken up for murder.
It appeared that, after quitting the Crown on the previous day, he met his sister’s husband, Captain Bird—from habit, people still accorded him his title. Captain Bird told him Lucy was dangerously ill, and asked him to go and see her. Robert went at once to their lodgings. What exactly happened there, no one as yet knew; but Robert and Bird got quarrelling. Robert did not come out again. In the morning (this morning) the neighbours heard a hue-and-cry; and on the door being opened by two policemen, Bird was found lying in the passage dead, as was supposed, and Robert Ashton was given into custody for his murder.
Jane touched me on the arm, and I followed her into the large, empty dining-room. That miserable breakfast! waiting for those who could not sit down to it. The evergreens on the walls seemed to look faded; the flowers on the table to have lost their first freshness.
“You see I was right, Johnny,” she said. “That dream was a dream of warning. And sent as one.”
It did look like it. But dreams are things you can’t lay hold of; no, nor altogether believe in. Standing by the cold grate, she began to shiver. In the confusion, the servants had let the fire go out.
“I would forget the dream, if I were you, Jane. Where’s the use of people having dreams——”
“Say warnings, Johnny.”
“——if they cannot see how to make use of them? Call them warnings, an you like the word better. They are of no good at all.”
“Oh, Johnny, if I could only die! It was hard enough to bear when he was only missing; but now——”
It was just as though she never meant to leave off shivering. I went to hunt for some sticks, and saw our cook, Molly, in the kitchen amongst the maids. Trust her for being in the thick of any gossip. Bringing the sticks back, I pushed them in, and they soon crackled up into a blaze. Jane sat down and watched them.