"And I want to tell you now that I am absolutely certain in my own mind that the boy never killed himself."
I was so startled that for a moment I could not answer her. She glanced out of the door of the hut, as though fearing that even in that place she might be overheard, and then went on speaking at a great rate:
"It was the last thing he would have done; there was no reason for it at all. He was happy, because he had always the mistaken hope that he might persuade me to love him. On the very night of his death—the night when you came there—he, too, had tried to persuade me to leave the house, and go away with him; like yourself, he believed that I was not safe with Dr. Just. Do you believe for a moment that, having said that to me, he would walk into the house and put a rope about his neck? No, I won't believe it!"
"But, my darling, how else could he have died?" I asked.
She answered me quite solemnly, and with the same deep earnestness I had heard in her tones before. "He was killed—murdered—by Dr. Just!"
"But why?" I asked stupidly.
"For the same reason that would prompt the man to seek your death, if he could," she said. "Bardolph Just knew that Gregory Pennington wanted to get me to go away; Gregory probably told him so that night. If I went away and married anyone, my fortune went with me, and it is my horrible fortune that has come near to losing me my life. I know, as surely as if I had seen it done, that the doctor killed Gregory Pennington. That he hanged him afterwards, to give colour to the idea of suicide, I quite believe; that would account for his anxiety to let you change places with the dead man."
"Another thought occurs to me," I said, after a pause. "Poor Gregory Pennington's servant—the man Capper—must have seen what happened; the shock of it has left his mind a blank."
"I wonder," said Debora slowly, "I wonder if Capper will ever speak!"
That thought had been in my mind too, but I had been too startled at what I had heard to speak of it. We left the matter where it was, and as the twilight was now coming on, came out of the hut and took our way by a circuitous route back towards the village. I took the girl to the inn, and left her in charge of the kindly landlady, giving the woman instructions that under no circumstances was she to let anyone know that the girl was there. I think the landlady scented a runaway match, for she smiled and nodded, and put a finger on her lips in token of silence.