rer. He was an urchin of ten or twelve, with a red, round face;
quite ludicrous from its present expression of terrified consternation.
The coroner sharply inquired what he was frightened at; and the boy burst
into a roar by way of answer. He didn't know nothing, and hadn't seen
nothing, and it wasn't him that drowned his lordship; and he couldn't
tell more if they hanged him for it.

The miller interposed. The boy was one of the idlest young vagabonds he
had ever had the luck to be troubled with; and he thought it exceedingly
likely he had been off that afternoon and not near the mill at all. He
had ordered him to take two sacks into Calne; but when he reached home he
found the sacks untouched, lying where he had placed them outside. Mr.
Ripper had no doubt been playing truant on his own account.

"Where did you pass Tuesday afternoon during your master's absence?"
sternly demanded the coroner. "Take your hands from your face and answer
me, boy."

David Ripper obeyed in the best manner he was capable of, considering his
agitation. "I dun know now where I was," he said. "I was about."

"About where?"

Mr. Ripper apparently could not say where. He thought he was "setting his
bird-trap" in the stubble-field; and he see a partridge, and watched
where it scudded to; but he wasn't nigh the mill the whole time.

"Did you see anything of Lord Hartledon when he was in the skiff?"

"I never saw him," he sobbed. "I wasn't nigh the mill at all, and never
saw him nor the skiff."

"What time did you get back to the mill?" asked the coroner.

He didn't know what time it was; his master and missis had come home.

This was true, Mr. Floyd said. They had been back some little time before
Ripper showed himself. The first intimation he received of that truant's
presence was when he drew his attention to the loose skiff.

"How came you to see the skiff?" sharply asked the coroner.

Ripper spoke up with trembling lips. He was waiting outside after he came
up, and afraid to go in lest his master should beat him for not taking
the sacks, which went clean out of his mind, they did, and then he saw
the little boat; upon which he called out and told his master.

"And it was also you who first saw the body in the water," observed the
coroner, regarding the reluctant witness curiously. "How came you to see
that? Were you looking for something of the sort?"

The witness shivered. He didn't know how he come to see it. He was on the
st