But no sooner was I beyond the grove than sounds struck on my ear in the stillness of the night. They seemed to come from the direction of Caramel Cottage. Darting under the side hedge, and then across the side lane, and so under the hedge again that bound the cottage, I stole on the grass as softly as a mouse. Poachers could not be at work there; but an idea flashed across me that somebody had got into Mr. Barbary’s well-stocked garden, and was robbing it.
Peering through the hedge, I saw Barbary himself. He was coming out of the brewhouse, dragging behind him, with two cords, a huge sack of some kind, well-filled and heavy. Opposite the open door, on the furnace, shone a lighted horn lantern. Mr. Barbary pushed-to the door behind him, thereby shutting out the light, dragged his burden over the yard to the garden, and let it fall into what looked like—a freshly dug grave.
Astonishment kept me intensely still. What did it all mean? Hardly daring to breathe, I stole in at the gate and under the shade of the hedge. Whatever it might contain, that sacking lay perfectly quiet, and Mr. Barbary began to shovel in the spadefuls of earth upon it, as one does upon a coffin.
This was nothing for me to interfere with, and I went away silently. It looked like a mystery, and a dark one; any way it was being done in secret in the witching hours of the night. What the time might be I knew not, the Squire having ordered our watches taken off before starting: perhaps one, or two, or three o’clock.
Tod and Harry Dene reached the gate of Dyke Manor just as I did; and we were greeted, all three, with a storm of reproaches by the Squire and Mr. Jacobson. What did we mean by it?—scampering off like that for hours?—for hours!—Three times had the gig been brought out and put up again! Harry was bundled headforemost into the gig, and Mr. Jacobson drove off.
And it turned out that my suspicion touching old Jones was right. Some young men had played the trick upon him. I need not have mentioned it at all, but for seeing what I did see in Barbary’s garden.
How Katrine Barbary passed that night you have seen: for, like many another story-teller, I have had to carry you back a few hours. Shivering and shaking, now hot, now cold, she lay, striving to reason with herself that it could not be; that so dreadful a thing was not possible; that she was the most wicked girl on earth for imagining it: and she strove in vain. All the events of the past day or two kept crowding into her mind one upon another in flaring colours, like the figures in some hideous phantasmagoria. The unexpected arrival of the bank-notes for Mr. Reste; her father’s covetous look at them and his dreadful joke; their going out together that night poaching; their quarrelling together the next morning; their worse quarrelling at night, and their dashing out to the yard (as if in passion) one after the other. And, so far as Katrine could trace it, that was the very last seen or heard of Edgar Reste. The next morning he was gone; gone in a mysterious manner, leaving all his possessions behind him. Her father was reticent over it; would not explain. Then came the little episode of the locked-up brewhouse, which had never been locked before in Joan’s memory. Mr. Barbary refused to unlock it, said he had put some wine there; told Joan she must do without the jack. What had really been hidden in that brewhouse? Katrine felt faint at the thought. Not wine. And the terrible farce of packing Mr. Reste’s effects and addressing them to Euston Square Station, London! Would they lie there for ever—unclaimed? Alas, alas! The proofs were only too palpable. Edgar Reste had been put out of the world for ever. She had been the shivering witness to his secret burial.
“What’s the matter, Katrine? Are you ill?”
The inquiry was made by Mr. Barbary next day at breakfast. Sick unto death she looked. The very bright night had given place to a showery morning, and the rain pattered against the window-panes.
“I have a headache,” answered Katrine, faintly.