him well, mistress?--him and the clothes he used to wear?"
asked Squire Boatfield.

"Oh, yes! I remember the clothes," she rejoined. "I saw them again on
the dead who now lieth in Adam's forge ... the same curious clothes of a
truth ... clothes the Lord would condemn as wantonness and vanity.... I
saw them again on the dead man," she reiterated garrulously, "the frills
and furbelows ... things the Lord hateth ... and which no Christian
should place upon his person ... yet the foreigner wore them ... he had
none other ... and went out with them on him that night that the Lord
sent him down into perdition...."

"Did you see him go out that night, mistress?" asked the squire.

"Eh? ... what? ..."

"Did he go out alone?"

The dimmed eyes of the old woman roamed restlessly from face to face. It
seemed as if that look of horror and of fear once more struggled to
appear within the pale orbs. Yet the squire looked on her with kindness,
and Lady Sue's tear-veiled eyes expressed boundless sympathy. Richard,
on the other hand, did not look at her, his gaze was riveted on Sir
Marmaduke de Chavasse with an intensity which caused the latter to meet
that look, trying to defy it, and then to flinch before its expression
of passionate wrath.

"We wish to know where your nephew Adam is, mistress," now broke in de
Chavasse roughly, "the squire and I would wish to ask him a few
questions."

Then as the Quakeress did not reply, he added almost savagely:

"Why don't you answer, woman? Are ye still hard of hearing?"

"Your pardon, Sir Marmaduke," interposed Lambert firmly, "my aunt is old
and feeble. She hath been much upset and over anxious ... seeing that my
brother Adam is still from home."

Sir Marmaduke broke into a loud and prolonged laugh.

"Ha! ha! ha! good master ... so I understand ... your brother is from
home ... whilst the wallet containing her ladyship's fortune has
disappeared along with him, eh?"

"What are they saying, lad?" queried the old woman in her trembling
voice, "what are they saying? I am fearful lest there's something wrong
with Adam...."

"Nay, nay, dear ... there's naught amiss," said Lambert soothingly,
"there's naught amiss...."

Instinctively now Sue had risen. Sir Marmaduke's cruel laugh had grated
horribly on her ear, rousing an echo in her memory which she could not
understand but which caused her to encircle the trembling figure of the
old Quakeress with young, protecting arms.

"Are Squ