Nash Caromel sighed, and said no more. He had been wanting badly enough to see a friend or two, but not to be shown up to the parish. We went out with Dobbs, who rushed into the copse to find his shoes.
This discovery might never have ensued, I take it, had Charlotte Nave and the lawyer not been upset in the gig. They would have stood persistently in his light—perhaps have succeeded in locking him in by force! As it was, we had it all our own way.
“How could you lend yourself to so infamous a deception?” cried the Squire to old Grizzel, following her into the pantry to ask it, when she returned from bolting the door after us. “I’m not at all sure that you could not be punished for it. It’s—it’s a conspiracy. And you, of all people, old Grizzel, to forget the honour of the Caromels! Why, you lived with his father!—and with his brother. All these years!”
“And how could I tell again him when I was asked not to?” contended Grizzel, the tears dropping on to a tin saucepan she was rubbing out. “Master Nash was as dear to me as the others were. Could it be me to speak up and say he was not in the coffin, but only old things to make up weight! Could it be me to tell he was alive and hiding up aloft here, and so get him put in prison? No, sir; the good name of the Caromels was much to me, but Master Nash was more.”
“Now, come, old woman, where’s the use of crying like that? Well, yes; you have been faithful, and it’s a great virtue. And—and there’s a shilling or two for you.”
“Have you been blowing her up?” asked Nash, as the Squire went back to him, and sat down on the other side the wide kitchen hearth, the fire throwing its glow upon the bricks, square and red and shining, and upon Nash Caromel’s wan face, in which it was not very difficult to read death. He had put his out-of-door coat off, a long brown garment, and sat in a grey suit. Tho Squire’s belief was that he wouldn’t have minded getting into the fire itself; he sat there shivering and shaking, and seeming to have no warmth left in him. The room was well guarded from outer observation. The shutters were up, and there was not a chink in them.
“I have,” said the Squire, in answer. “Told her she did not show much regard for the honour of the family—lending herself to such a deception!”
“Poor old Grizzel!” sighed Nash, with a half-smile. “She has lived upon thorns, fearing I should be discovered. As to the family honour, Todhetley, the less said about that the better.”
“How could you do it, Caromel?”
“I don’t know,” answered Nash, with apathy, bringing his face closer to the blaze. “I let it be done, more than did it. All I did, or could do, was just to lie still in my bed. The fever had left me weaker than a child——”