No need to ask what it meant. At last the justice of God was manifest. The murderer lay, a rigid corpse, before the son of the murdered.
“Did you strike him?” I asked.
“Is it likely,” said the youth, “that I would strike an aged man like that? I assure you I never had such a fright in my life. This poor old fellow came on me quite suddenly, from behind a rock, when all my mind was full of my father; and his eyes met mine, and down he fell, as if I had shot him through the heart!”
“You have done no less,” I answered; and then I stooped over the corpse (as I had stooped over the corpse of its victim), and the whole of my strength was required to draw the great knotted hands from the eyes, upon which they were cramped with a spasm not yet relaxed.
“It is Hopkin ap Howel!” I cried, as the great eyes, glaring with the horror of death, stood forth. “Black Hopkin once, white Hopkin now! Robert Bowring, you have slain the man who slew your father.”
“You know that I never meant to do it,” said Bob. “Surely, uncle, it was his own fault!”
“How did he come? I see no way. He was not here when I showed you the place, or else we must have seen him.”
“He came round the corner of that rock, that stands in front of the furze-bush.”
Now that we had the clue, a little examination showed the track. Behind the furze-bush, a natural tunnel of rock, not more than a few yards long, led into a narrow gorge covered with brushwood, and winding into the valley below the farmhouse of the Dewless Crags. Thither we hurried to obtain assistance, and there the whole mystery was explained.
Black Hopkin (who stole behind George Bowring and stunned, or, perhaps, slew him with one vile blow) has this and this only to say at the Bar—that he did it through love of his daughter.