I did not answer. The evening star was beginning to show itself in the sky.
“I must feel my way in this, Johnny: be guided by circumstances,” he resumed, when we halted at the stile that led across the fields to the Manor. “We must watch the turn matters take to-morrow at the inquest. Of course if I find it necessary to declare it, I shall declare it. Meanwhile, lad, you had better not mention it to any one.”
“All right, Mr. Duffham. Good-evening.”
The jury went straggling into the Silver Bear by twos and threes. Up dashed the coroner’s gig, as before, he and his clerk seated side by side. All the parish had collected about the doors, and were trying to push into the inquest-room.
Gliding quietly in, before the proceedings were opened, came Abel Crew in his quaint velvet suit, his silver hair gleaming in the sunlight, his pale face calm as marble. The coroner ordered him to sit on a certain chair, and whispered to old Jones. Upon which the constable turned his gouty legs round, marched up, and stood guard over Crew, just as though Abel were his prisoner.
“Do you see that, sir?” I whispered to Duffham.
“Yes, lad, and understand it. Crew’s pills have been analyzed—officially this time, as the jury put it—and found to contain arsenic. Pettipher was right. The pills killed the children.”
Well, you might have knocked me down with a feather. I had been fully trusting in Crew’s innocence.
About the first witness called, and sworn, was the professional man from a distance who had analyzed the pills. He said that they contained arsenic. Not in sufficient quantity to hurt a grown-up person; more than sufficient to kill a little child. The coroner drew in his lips.
“I thought it must be so,” he said, apparently for the benefit of the jury. “Am I to understand that these were improper pills to send out?—pills that no medical man would be likely to send?”