With a relief that no tongue could express, Karl saw them pass the Maze and come onwards. Presently, in the night's imperfect light, he distinguished a kind of covered stretcher, or hand-barrow, borne by a policeman and other men, a small mob following.
"Is anything amiss!" he asked, taking a few steps into the road, and speaking in the quietest tones he could just then command.
"It's poor Whittle, Sir Karl," replied the policeman--who knew him. There were a few scattered cottages skirting the wood beyond the Court, and Karl recognized the name, Whittle, as that of a man who lived in one of them and worked at the railway-station.
"Is he ill?" asked Karl.
"He is dead, Sir Karl. He was missed from his work in the middle of the afternoon and not found till an hour ago: there he was, stretched out in the field, dead. We got Mr. Moore round, and he thinks it must have been a sun-stroke."
"What a sad thing!" cried Karl, in his pitying accents. "Does his wife know?"
"We've sent on to prepare her, poor woman! There's four or five little children, Sir Karl, more's the pity!"
"Ay; I know there are some. Tell her I will come in and see her in the morning."
A murmur of approbation at the last words arose from the bystanders. It seemed to them an earnest that the new baronet, Sir Karl, would turn out to be a kind and considerate man; as good for them perhaps as Sir Joseph had been.
He listened to the tramp, tramp, until it had died away, and then turned in home with all his trouble and care: determined to search the newspapers--filed by Sir Joseph--before he went to rest, for some particulars of this Philip Salter.