"I stood looking at the man; that is, at where he had disappeared; expecting he was pitching down head foremost and getting half killed, at the pace he was going, when Miss Thornycroft laid hold of me, shaking and crying, almost beside herself with terror. Then I found that Miss Chester had fainted away, and was lying like one dead on the frosty grass inside the Round Tower."
"What account did they give of this?"
"They gave none to me. Miss Chester, when she came to herself, was too much shook to do it, and Miss Thornycroft was no better. I thought they had been startled by the man; I never thought worse; and I did not hear of the murder till the next morning. They told me not to say anything about it at home, or it would be known they had been on the plateau. So Miss Thornycroft ran back to the Red Court, and I went home with Miss Chester."
"What else do you know about the matter?"
"I don't know any more myself. I have heard plenty."
The witness's "hearing" was dispensed with, and Captain Copp was requested to stand up and answer a question. The captain's face, as he listened to the foregoing evidence, was something ludicrous to look upon.
"What account did Miss Chester and your servant give you of this transaction?" demanded the coroner.
"What account did they give me?" spluttered Captain Copp, to whom the question sounded as the most intense aggravation. "They gave me none. This is the first time my ears have heard it. I only wish I had been behind them with a cat-o'-nine-tails"--shaking his stick in a menacing manner--"I'd have taught them to go gampusing on to the plateau at night, after sweethearts! I'll send my niece back to whence she came; her father was a clergyman, Mr. Coroner, a rector of a parish. And that vile bumboat-woman, Sarah, with her apron over her head, shall file out of my quarters this day; a she-pirate, a----"
The coroner interposed. But what with Captain Copp's irascibility and his real ignorance of the whole transaction, nothing satisfactory could be obtained from him, and the next witness called was Miss Chester. A lady-like, interesting girl, thought those of the spectators who had not previously seen her. She gave her evidence in a sad, low tone, trembling the whole of the time with inward terror. To a sensitive mind, as hers was, the very fact of having to give her name as Anna Chester when it was Anna Thornycroft, would have been enough alarm. But there was worse than that.
Her account of their going on to the plateau was the same as Sarah's. It was "done in the impulse of the moment," to "frighten," or "speak to," Robert Hunter, who was at its edge. (A groan from Captain Copp.) That they halted for a moment at the Round Tower, and then found that a man was following them on to the plateau, so they ran inside to hide themselves.