e ewe lamb, and he
must leave the world that was open to him, and pick her up, and destroy
her! I ain't calm yet to talk of it, sir."

"But how did you ascertain this? Your suspicions, you know, were
directed to Mr. John Massingbird: wrongly, as I believed; as I told
you."

"Yes, they were wrong," said Robin. "I was put upon the wrong scent: but
not wilfully. You might remember a dairy wench that lived at Verner's
Pride in them days, sir--Dolly, her name was; she that went and got
married after to Joe Stubbs, Mr. Bitterworth's wagoner. It was she told
me, sir. I used to be up there a good bit with Stubbs, and one day when
I was sick and ill there, the wife told me she had seen one of the
gentlemen come from the Willow Pool that past night. I pressed her to
tell me which of them, and at first she said she couldn't, and then she
said it was Mr. John. I never thought but she told me right, but it
seems--as she confesses now--that she only fixed on him to satisfy me,
and because she thought he was dead, over in Australia, and it wouldn't
matter if she did say it. I worried her life out over it, she says; and
it's like I did. She says now, if she was put upon her Bible oath, she
couldn't say which of the gentlemen it was, more nor the other; but she
did see one of 'em."

"But this is not telling me how you know it to have been Mr. Frederick,
Robin."

"I learned it from Mr. John," was the reply. "When he come back I saw
him; I knew it was him; and I got a gun and watched for him. I meant to
take my revenge, sir. Roy, he found me out; and in a night or two, he
brought me face to face with Mr. John, and Mr. John he told me the
truth. But he'd only tell it me upon my giving him my promise not to
expose his brother. So I'm balked even of that revenge. I had always
counted on the exposing of the man," added Robin in a dreamy tone, as if
he were looking back into the past; "when I thought it was Mr. John, I
only waited for Luke Roy to come home, that I might expose him. I judged
that Luke, being so much with him in Australia, might have heard a slip
word drop as would confirm it. Somehow, though I thought Dolly Stubbs
spoke truth, I didn't feel so sure of her as to noise it abroad."

"You say it was Mr. John Massingbird who told you it was his brother?"

"He told me, sir. He told me at Roy's, when he was a-hiding there. When
the folks here was going mad about the ghost, I knowed who the ghost
was, and had my laugh at 'em. It