"Back, back, I say!" she repeated; "I need no witnesses—there will be enough of them soon. Mr. Glasscott," she continued, closing the door, "hear me, while I am able to bear testimony, lest weakness—woman's weakness—overcome me, and I falter in the truth. In the broom-sellers' cottage, across the common, on the left side of the chimney, concealed by a large flat stone, is a hole—a den; there much of the property taken from Sir Thomas Purcel's last night is concealed."
"I have long suspected these men—Smith, I think, they call themselves. Yet they are but two. Now, we have abundant proof, that three men absolutely entered the house."
"There was a third," murmured Grace, almost inaudibly.
"Who?"
"My—my—my husband!" and, as she uttered the word, she leaned against the chimney-piece for support, and buried her face in her hands.
The clergyman groaned audibly;—he had known Grace from her childhood, and felt what the declaration must have cost her. Sir Thomas Purcel was cast in a sterner mould.
"We are put clearly on the track, Mr. Glasscott," he said, "and must follow it forthwith; yet there is something most repugnant to my feelings in finding a woman thus herald her husband to destruction."
"It was to save my children from sin!" exclaimed Grace, starting forward with an energy that appalled them all: "God in heaven, whom I call to witness, knows, that though I would sooner starve than taste of the fruits of his wickedness, yet I could not betray the husband of my bosom to—to—I dare not think what!—I tried, I laboured to give my offspring honest bread. I neither asked nor received charity; with my hands I laboured, and blessed the Power that enabled me to do so. If we are poor, we will be honest, was my maxim, and my boast. But he—my husband—returned; he taught my boy to lie—to steal! and when I remonstrated—when I prayed, with many tears, that he would cease to train our—ay, our child for destruction, he mocked—scorned—told me, that, one by one, I should be bereaved of my children if I thwarted his purposes; and that I might seek in vain for them through the world, until I saw their names recorded in the book of shame!—Gentlemen, this was no idle threat. Last night, Abel was taken from me—"
"I knew there must have been a fourth," interrupted Sir Thomas, coldly; "we must have the boy also secured."
The wretched mother, who had not imagined that any harm could result to her son, stood as if a thunderbolt had transfixed her; her hands clenched and extended—her features rigid and blanched—her frame perfectly erect, and motionless as a statue. The schoolmaster, during the whole of this scene, had been completely bewildered, until the idea of his grandchild's danger or disappearance, he knew not which, took possession of his mind; and, filled with the single thought his faculties had the power of grasping at a time, he came forward to the table at which Mr. Glasscott was seated, and respectfully uncovering his grey hairs, his simple countenance presenting a strong contrast to the agonized iron-bound features of his daughter, he addressed himself to the worthy magistrate: "I trust you will cause instant search to be made for the child Abel, whom your reverence used kindly to regard with especial favour."