“And on the day of the ——, on the day when Mr. Brady was killed?” Grace persisted.
“Well, Miss, I was that beat from the day before, I did not stir out till evening; and I would not have gone then, but the wife she would have me go to Kingslough and tell the doctor the boy was worse. So I went there and he was out, and I left my message; and in the ordinary way I should have come straight home, but I thought I would go round by Mark Lennon’s, and tell his daughter we had a letter from him she’s promised to; but before I got there I turned that bad and weak, I thought to make my home as fast as I could, and so came across the fields and the Red Stream; and they make that a charge against me too, Miss Grace, because, as you know, the colour of the clay there is the same as the colour of the clay in the water alongside the divisional where Brady was found.”
In spirit, Grace groaned. She believed the man was speaking truly, but what jury on earth would believe it also! There was not a point in his favour. Every statement he made told against him. He could not say where he lost his stick. He could not say where he had been to lose it. He could not account for his time after he left Kingslough on the night of the murder. As to the place where he got the mud found on his clothes, there was only his own word, and of what value is the word of an accused man. Even his own wife imagined him guilty. No one in the world, save Grace Moffat, imagined it within the bounds of possibility that, though circumstantial and internal evidence were all against him, he might yet be innocent; and it was just on the board that had she lived in Ireland for the previous twelve months, and seen his animus to Mr. Brady growing day by day, she might have believed him guilty too.
“All I can say,” she remarked, as she rose to leave, “is this; you shall have the best counsel money can procure.”
“Thank you kindly, Miss,” he answered, “but, as I said before, money can’t do it, and man can’t do it, let him be the best ever stepped in shoe leather; and if God does not do it, and in these later days, as our minister used to say, he has not seen fit to work visible miracles, I must suffer, Miss Grace; that is all. I have made my mind up to that now he is dead, as I never could to giving up the farm while he was living.”
“Amos,” said Miss Moffat, “do not let what your minister said impress you too much. God does still work miracles, or what seem miracles to us; and if he sees fit he will clear you from this.”
“And if He does not see fit, Miss Grace, I must just thole what He sends; that is all. You can say that to the wife if you have a chance. Do you happen to know, Miss, how it is with Reuben?”
For a moment Grace faltered; then she said,—
“Whatever else you are spared to see in this world I am afraid—” she paused, and he calmly finished the sentence.
“I won’t see him. Well then, Miss, it may be we shall meet all the sooner, Reuben and me, when he will know that wrongfully blood-guiltiness was laid to my charge.”