dreary scene
now or presently, the slow winding of the dismal little procession down
the road which leads to Minster, and whence she could not hear that
weird flapping of the wet sheet against the side of the coffin, an echo
to the slow and muffled tolling of the church bell some little distance
away.

But the old woman was obstinate. She struggled against the persuasion of
young arms. Things had been said in her cottage just now, which she must
hear more distinctly: vague accusations had been framed, a cruel and
sneering laugh had echoed through the house from whence one of her
lads--Adam--was absent.

"No! no!" she said with quiet firmness, as Lambert urged her to
withdraw, "let be, lad ... let be ... ye cannot deceive the old woman
all of ye.... The Lord hath put wool in my ears, so I cannot hear ...
but my eyes are good.... I can see your faces.... I can read them....
Speak man!" she said, as she suddenly disengaged herself from Richard's
restraining arms and walked deliberately up to Marmaduke de Chavasse,
"speak man.... Didst thou accuse Adam?"

An involuntary "No!" escaped from the squire's kindly heart and lips.
But Sir Marmaduke shrugged his shoulders.

The crisis which by his own acts, by his own cowardice, he himself had
precipitated, was here now. Fatality had overtaken him. Whether the
whole truth would come to light he did not know. Truly at this moment he
hardly cared. He did not feel as if he were himself, but another being
before whom stood another Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse, on whom he--a
specter, a ghoul, a dream figure--was about to pass judgment.

He knew that he need do nothing now, for without his help or any effort
on his part, that morbid curiosity which had racked his brain for two
days would be fully satisfied. He would know absolutely now, exactly
what everyone thought of the mysterious French prince and of his
terrible fate on Epple sands.

Thank Satan and all his hordes of devils that heavy chalk boulders had
done so complete a work of obliteration.

But whilst he looked down with complete indifference on the old woman,
she looked about from one face to the other, trying to read what cruel
thoughts of Adam lurked behind those obvious expressions of sympathy.

"So that foreign devil hath done mischief at last," she now said loudly,
her tremulous voice gaining in strength as she spoke, "the Lord would
not allow him to do it living ... so the devil hath helped him to it now
that he i