"Lord help the wench for a fool! Don't you know that! if you are conveyed to Helstonleigh it would be to take your trial at the next assizes? Would you face that?"
"I cannot tell," wailed Alletha, putting up her thin hand to her troubled face. "I must have time to think."
But we must follow Mr. Brown. As he passed into his room and closed the door, he took a tolerably long look into Butterby's eyes: possibly hoping to discover whether that astute officer knew him for Godfrey Pitman. He obtained no result. Had Mr. Butterby been a born natural he could not have looked more charmingly innocent. That he chose to indulge this demand for an interview for purposes of his own, those who knew him could not doubt. They stood together before the fireless hearth; however cold the weather might be, Mr. Brown's fire went out after breakfast and was not re-lighted until night.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Butterby. With so much confusion in there"--nodding in the direction of Mrs. Jones's parlour--"I am not sure that I fully understood. Is it true that you are about to take Miss Rye into custody on suspicion of having caused the death of John Ollivera?"
"I have took her," was the short answer. "It is nothing to you, I suppose."
"It is this much to me: that I happen to be in a position to testify that she did not do it."
"Oh, you think so, do you," said Butterby, in a civil but slightly mocking tone. "I've knowed ten men at least swear to one man's innocence of a crime, and him guilty all the while. Don't say it was perjury: appearances is deceptive, and human nature's soft."
"I affirm to you, in the hearing of Heaven, that Alletha Rye was innocent of the death of John Ollivera," said Mr. Brown in a solemn tone that might have carried conviction to even a less experienced ear. "She had nothing whatever to do with it. Until the following morning, when she found him, she was as ignorant as you that he was dead."
"Then why don't she speak up and say so? Not that it could make any difference at the present stage of affairs."
"Will you let me ask who it is that has had her apprehended? Mr. Bede Greatorex?"