While the warrants were in preparation, it was announced to the magistrates that Mr. Peter Tims himself was below, with the undertakers; and, also, that the constable of a neighboring parish had brought up a boy who had found a hat upon the sea-shore, which, it was supposed, might throw some light upon the matter before the magistrates.
Mr. Tims was accordingly directed to wait, while the boy was brought up, and the hat examined. The peculiarity of its form--a form unknown in Emberton--and of its color--a shade of that light russet-brown in which Shakspeare clothes the dawn for her morning's walk at once led Dr. Wilton to believe that it had belonged to his unfortunate friend, Henry Beauchamp. As Beauchamp, however, was not one of those men who write their names in their hats, the matter still remained in the most unpleasant state in the world--a state of doubt; and such a state being not less disagreeable to Dr. Wilton than to any one else--after catechising the boy, and discovering that nothing was to be discovered, except that the hat had been washed on shore at about five miles' distance from Ryebury, of which washing it bore ample marks--the worthy clergyman left his companions in magistracy to expedite the warrants, and returned in person to Emberton, in order to examine Mrs. Wilson, Beauchamp's late landlady, in regard to the hat, which he carried thither along with him.
As soon as Mrs. Wilson saw it, she declared that it was the identical hat that poor dear Mr. Burrel used always to wear in the morning. She had seen it, she said, full a hundred times, and knew it, because the leather in the inside was laced with a silk tag, for all the world like the bodices she could remember when she was young. Eagerly, also, did she question Dr. Wilton as to where it had been found; for it seems that Mr. Burrel had been no small favorite with the old lady; and when she was made acquainted with the facts, she wrung her hands, declaring that she was sure the poor young gentleman had gone and drowned himself for love of Miss Delaware. Now, Dr. Wilton had at his heart entertained a sort of vague suspicion that Beauchamp, notwithstanding all his strong moral and religious principles, might--in a moment of despair, and in that fancied disgust at the world, which he was somewhat too apt to pamper--do some foolish act. Perhaps I should have said that he _feared_ it might be so; and, as he would rather have believed any other thing and was very angry at himself for supposing it possible, he was, of course, still more angry at good Mrs. Wilson for so strongly confirming his apprehensions. He scolded her very heartily, therefore, for imagining what he had before imagined himself; and was just leaving her house, when he bethought him of making inquiries concerning the haunts and behavior of Mr. Burrel's valet, Harding. To his questions on this head, Mrs. Wilson--though a little indignant at the reprimand she had received--replied in the most clear and distinct manner, that Harding had never kept company with any one but Mr. Smithson, the chemist gentleman, who lodged farther up the town; that no one scarcely ever heard the sound of his voice; and that, for her part, so queer were his ways, that she should have thought that he was a conjuror, if he had not been a gentleman's servant--which two occupations she mistakenly imagined to be incompatible.
Dr. Wilton next inquired what was the size of the valet's foot, at which Mrs. Wilson looked aghast, demanding, "Lord! how should she know what was the size of the gentleman's foot? But stay," she cried the moment after, "Stay, stay, sir! Now I think of it, I can tell to a cheeseparing; for in the hurry that he went away in, he left a pair of boots behind him; and the groom, when he set off the morning after, would not take them, because he said Mr. Harding was always _jawing_ him, and meddling with his business, and some day or another he would tell him a thing or two."
Dr. Wilton demanded an immediate sight of the boots, with all the eagerness of a connoisseur, and with much satisfaction beheld a leathern foot bag, of extraordinary length, brought in by the landlady, who declared, as she entered, that "he had a very long foot after all."
The boot was immediately carried off to the inn; but as Mr. Egerton had the measurements with him at Ryebury, Dr. Wilton was obliged to wait one mortal hour and a half ere he could proceed to ascertain the correspondence of the valet's boot with the bloody mark of the murderer's foot, tormenting himself about Beauchamp in the mean while. After waiting that time, however, in fretful incertitude, as to going to the place itself, or staying his fellow-magistrate's return, Mr. Egerton appeared, the paper on which the footmarks had been traced was produced, and the boot being set down thereon, filled up one of the vacant spaces without the difference of a line.
"Now, now, we have him!" cried Dr. Wilton, rubbing his hands eagerly; "Now we have him. Beyond all question, the counsel for the crown will permit the least criminal to become king's evidence, and I doubt not, in the slightest degree, that we shall find poor William Delaware completely exculpated."
"You call to my mind, my dear friend," said Mr. Egerton, laying his hand on Di. Wilton's arm, as if to stop his transports--"you call to my mind a waggish receipt for dressing a strange dish."
"How so? how so?" demanded Dr. Wilton, with a subdued smile at the reproof of his eagerness, which he knew was coming in some shape or other. "What is your receipt, my dear sir?"
"It runs thus," answered Mr. Egerton, "_How to dress a griffin_--First, catch a griffin!--and then, dress him any way you like!"