She lodged the paper parcel on the top of the gate, holding it with one hand, and looked wistfully across the graveyard. Harry Castlemaine whistled to a sparrow that was chirping on a branch of the nearest yew-tree.
"Was it Mr. Nettleby who did it?" she inquired, in a low, hesitating whisper.
"Mr. Nettleby!" repeated Harry Castlemaine in astonishment, breaking of his whistle to the bird. "What in the world makes you ask that Jane?"
A faint colour passed over her thin face, and she paused before answering.
"Mrs. Bent said she thought nobody in the place possessed a pistol except Superintendent Nettleby."
He looked keenly at Jane: at her evident uneasiness. She was growing pale again; paler than before; with what looked like an unnatural pallor. Mr. Harry Castlemaine's brow knitted itself into lines, with the effort to make Jane out.
"I don't like the chapel ruins: or the Friar's Keep," she went on, in the same low tone. "I wish nobody ever went near them. I wish you would not go!"
"Wish I would not go!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean, Jane?"
"It may be your turn next to be shot," she said with rising emotion, so much so that the words came out jerkingly.
"I cannot tell what it is that you are driving at," he answered, regarding searchingly the evidently tired frame, the unmistakable agitation and anxiety of the thin, white face. "What have I to do with the chapel ruins? I don't go roaming about at night with a pistol to shoot sea-birds."