Their own house looked, on the contrary, all dark. Karl could not see that so much as the hall-lamp was lighted. A sudden conviction flashed over him that he was wrong, after all; that it was to Foxwood he ought to have gone.
"My mother and Adam and all the world are off to it, no doubt," he said as he looked up at the dark windows, after knocking at the door. "Deuce take the telegraph!"
The door was opened by Hewitt: Hewitt with a candle in his hand. That is, the door was drawn a few inches back, and the man's face appeared in the aperture. Karl was seized with a sudden panic: for he had never seen, in all his life, a face blanched as that was, or one so full of horror.
"What is the matter!" he involuntarily exclaimed, under his breath.
Ay, what was the matter? Hewitt, the faithful serving man of many years, threw up his hands when he saw Karl, and cried out aloud before he told it. His master, Sir Adam, had shot Martin Scott.
Karl Andinnian stood against the doorpost inside as he listened; stood like one bereft of motion. For a moment he could put no questions: but it crossed his mind that Hewitt must be mad and was telling some fable of an excited brain.
Not so. It was all too true. Adam Andinnian had deliberately shot the young medical student, Martin Scott. And Hewitt, poor Hewitt, had been a witness to the deed.
"Is he dead!" gasped Karl. And it was the first word he spoke.
"Stone dead, sir. The shot entered his heart. 'Twas done at sunset. He was carried into Mr. Turner's place, and is lying there."
A confused remembrance of the lights he had seen arose to Karl's agitated brain. He pressed his hand on his brow and stared at Hewitt For a moment or two, he thought he himself must be going mad.