“And now that I’ve got that there word from ye, I’ll say good-day to ye, neighbour, for I’ve left my forge to itself, and some red-hot iron in it. And I hope with all my heart and mind,”—the blacksmith turned round from the door to say more kindly, his good-nature cropping up again,—“that it’ll turn out it warn’t the pills, but some’at else: our Ann won’t have no cause to be in a fright then.” Which was as much as to say that Ann Dovey was frightened, you observe.
That same afternoon, going past the common, I saw Abel Crew in his garden, sitting against the cottage wall in the sun, his foot resting on a block of wood.
“How did it all happen, Abel?” I asked, turning in at the gate. “Did you give Mrs. Reed the wrong pills?”
“No, sir,” he answered, “I gave her the right pills; the pills I make expressly for such complaints as hers. But if I had, in one sense, given her the wrong, they could not have brought about any ill effect such as this, for my pills are all innocent of poison.”
“I should say it could not have been the pills that did the mischief, after all, then.”
“You might swear it as well, Master Johnny, with perfect safety. What killed the poor children, I don’t pretend to know, but my pills never did. I tried to get down as far as Reed’s to inquire particulars, and found I could not walk. It was a bit of ill-luck, disabling myself just at this time.”
“Shall you have to appear at the inquest to-morrow?”
He lifted his head quickly at the question—as though it surprised him. Perhaps not having cast his thoughts that way.
“Is there to be an inquest, Master Johnny?”