"Ah! who did? I'd like to know," she passionately added. "He had folks in this town that owed him grudges, had Mr. Anthony Dare."
"If my vision didn't deceive me, I saw you talking to him that very same night," carelessly observed the sergeant.
"Did you see me?" she rejoined, apparently as much at ease as the sergeant himself. "I had to do an errand at that end of the town, and I met him, and told him what he was. I hadn't spoke to him for months and months; for years, I think. I had slipped into doors, down entries, anywhere to avoid him, if I saw him coming; but a feeling came over me to speak to him then. I'm glad I did. I hope the truths I said to him went along with him to enliven him on his journey!"
"Did you see him after that, later in the evening?" resumed the inspector, putting the question sociably, and stretching his neck up to obtain a view of something at a distance.
"No, I didn't," she replied. "But I would, if I had thought it was going to be his last. I'd have bade him remember all his good works where he was going to. I'd almost have went with him, I would, to have heard how he answered for them, up there."
Caroline Mason glanced upwards to indicate the sky, when a loud flourish of trumpets from the advancing heralds sounded close upon them. As they rode up at a foot pace, they dropped their trumpets, and the mounted javelin-men quickly followed, their javelins in rest. A carriage or two; a few more officials; and then advanced the equipage of the high sheriff. Only one of the judges was in it, fully robed: a fine man, with a benign countenance. A grave smile was on it as he spoke to the sheriff, who sat opposite to him, his chaplain by his side.
Sergeant Delves's attention was distracted for an instant, and when he looked round again, Caroline Mason had disappeared. He just caught sight of her in the distance, winding her way through the crowd, her head down.
"Did she do it, or did she not?" cried the sergeant, in soliloquy. "Go on, go on, my lady, for the present; you are about to be a bit looked after."
How did the prisoners feel, and Herbert Dare amongst them, as the joyous sounds, outside, fell upon their ears; the blast of the trumpets, the sweetness of the bells, the stir of life: penetrating within the walls of the city and county prisons? Did they feel that the pomp and show, run after as a holiday sight, was only a cruel advent to them?—that the formidable and fiery vision in the scarlet robe and flowing wig, who sat in the carriage, bending his serene face upon the mob, collected to stare and shout, might prove the pronouncer of their doom?—a doom that should close the portals of this world upon them, and open those of eternity!