'Yes, sir.'
Sir George did not reply, but stood staring at the man, his mind divided between two thoughts. The first that this was the solution of the many things that had puzzled him in Julia; at once the explanation of her sudden amiability, her new-born forwardness, the mysterious fortune into which she had come, and of her education and her strange past. She was his cousin, the unknown claimant! She was his cousin, and--
He awoke with a start, dragged away by the second thought--hard following on the first. 'From Manton Corner?' he cried, his voice keen, his eye terrible. 'Who saw it?'
'One of the servants,' the landlord answered, 'who had gone to the top of the Mound to clean the mirrors in the summer-house. Here, you,' he continued, beckoning to a man who limped forward reluctantly from one of the side passages in which he had been standing, 'show yourself, and tell this gentleman the story you told me.'
'If it please your honour,' the fellow whimpered, 'it was no fault of mine. I ran down to give the alarm as soon as I saw what was doing--they were forcing her into the carriage then--but I was in such a hurry I fell and rolled to the bottom of the Mound, and was that dazed and shaken it was five minutes before I could find any one.'
'How many were there?' Sir George asked. There was an ugly light in his eyes and his cheeks burned. But he spoke with calmness.
'Two I saw, and there may have been more. The chaise had been waiting in the yard of the empty house at the corner, the old Nag's Head. I saw it come out. That was the first thing I did see. And then the lady.'
'Did she seem to be unwilling?' the man in the Ramillies asked. 'Did she scream?'
'Ay, she screamed right enough,' the fellow answered lumpishly. 'I heard her, though the noise came faint-like. It is a good distance, your honour'll mind, and some would not have seen what I saw.'
'And she struggled?'