"What on earth for?" was the answer of Mrs. Copp.
"The subject was, and is, and always will be productive of the utmost pain to my family. We should be thankful to let all remembrance of it die out of men's minds."
"Now I tell you what it is, Mr. Isaac; you are thinking of your brother Cyril. Of course as long as he stays away, he'll be suspected of the murder, but I've not said so----"
"Be silent, I pray you," interrupted Isaac, in a tone of sharp pain. "Hear me, while I clear your mind from any suspicion of that kind. By all my hope of heaven--by all our hope," he added, lifting solemnly his right hand, "my brother Cyril was innocent."
"Well, we'll let that pass," said Mrs. Copp, with a sniff. "Many a pistol has gone off by accident before now, and small blame to the owners of it. Perhaps you'll be good enough to bear me out to Miss Jupp that Robert Hunter was shot dead."
Isaac paced the room. Mrs. Macpherson had come in and was listening; the professor halted at the door. Better satisfy them once for all, or there would be no end to it.
"It came to our knowledge afterwards--long afterwards--that it was not Robert Hunter," said Isaac, with slow distinctness. "The mistake arose from the face not having been recognisable. Hunter is alive and well."
"The saints preserve us!" cried Mrs. Copp in her discomfiture. "Then why did his ghost appear?"
A momentary smile flitted across the face of Isaac. "I suppose--in point of fact--it was not his ghost, Mrs. Copp."
Mrs. Copp's senses were three-parts lost in wonder at the turn affairs were taking. "Who, then, was shot down? A stranger?"