Mr. Dare had been for a long while in the habit of smoking a pipe before he went to bed. He would have told you that he could not do without it. If business or pleasure took him out, he must have his pipe when he returned, however late it might be.
"How hot it is!" he exclaimed, throwing back his coat. "Leave the hall door open, Joseph: I'll sit outside. Bring me my pipe."
Joseph looked for the pipe in its appointed resting-place, and could not see it. It was a small, handsome pipe, silver-mounted, with an amber mouth-piece. The tobacco-jar was there, but Joseph could see nothing of the pipe.
"Law! I remember!" exclaimed Betsy. "Master left it in the dining-room last night, and I put it under the sideboard when I was doing the room this morning, intending to bring it away. I'll go and get it."
Taking the candle from Joseph's hand, she turned hastily into the dining-room. Not, however, as hastily as she came out of it. She rushed out, uttering a succession of piercing shrieks, and seized upon Joseph. The shrieks echoed through the house, upstairs and down, and Mr. Dare came in.
"Why, what on earth's the matter, girl?" cried he. "Have you seen a ghost?"
"Oh, sir! Oh, Joseph, don't let go of me; Mr. Anthony's lying in there, dead!"
"Don't be a simpleton," responded Mr. Dare, staring at Betsy.
Joseph gave a rather less complimentary reprimand, and shook the girl off. But suddenly, even as the words left his lips, there rose up before his mind's eye the vision of the past evening: the quarrel, the threats, the violence between Anthony and Herbert. A strange apprehension seated itself in the man's mind.
"Be still, you donkey!" he whispered to Betsy, his voice scarcely audible, his manner subdued. "I'll go in and see."