In the course of the morning, Tom Dance and two or three fishermen-friends of his came to the Grey Nunnery to convey Walter home. The rumour of what had happened had caused the greatest commotion abroad, and all the village, men and women, turned out to look for the removal. Fishermen, for that tide, abandoned their boats, women their homes and their household cares. No such excitement had arisen for Greylands since the vanishing of Anthony Castlemaine as this. The crowd attended him to Tom Dance's door with much hubbub; and after his disappearance within it, stayed to make their comments: giving praises to those good Grey Ladies who had received and succoured him.
"Now then," cried the doctor to his patient, when he had placed him comfortably in bed at his father's house and seen him take some refreshment, no one being present but themselves, "what is the true history of this matter, Walter? I did not care to question you much before."
"The true history?" faltered Walter; who was not the best hand at deception that the world could produce.
"What brought you in the chapel ruins with a loaded pistol at that untoward time of night?"
"I wanted to shoot a sea-bird: them that come abroad at night," was the uneasy answer. "A gentleman at Stilborough gave me an order for one. He's a-going to get him stuffed."
Mr. Parker looked at the speaker keenly. He detected the uneasiness at being questioned.
"And you thought that hour of the morning and that particular spot the best to shoot the bird?" he asked.
"Them birds are always hovering about the ruins there," spoke Walter, shifting his eyes in all directions. "Always a'most. One can only get at 'em at pitch dark, when things are dead still."
"I thought, too, that birds were generally shot with guns, not pistols," said the surgeon; and the young man only; groaned in answer to this: in explanation of which groan he volunteered the information that his "arm gave him a twitch."
"Where did you get the pistol?"