t my return; being careful to place him under the
protection of the upper servants--who would see that he was treated with
respect by the household generally.

CHAPTER XV

THE MILLER'S HOSPITALITY

On the way to Toller's cottage, my fears for Cristel weighed heavily on
my mind.

That the man who had tried to poison me was capable of committing any
other outrage, provided he saw a prospect of escaping with impunity, no
sane person could hesitate to conclude. But the cause of my alarm was not
to be traced to this conviction. It was a doubt that made me tremble.

After what I had myself seen, and what Gloody had told me, could I hope
to match my penetration, or the penetration of any person about me whom I
could trust, against the fathomless cunning, the Satanic wickedness, of
the villain who was still an inmate with Cristel, under her father's
roof?

I have spoken of his fathomless cunning, and his Satanic wickedness. The
manner in which the crime had been prepared and carried out would justify
stronger expressions still. Such was the deliberate opinion of the lawyer
whom I privately consulted, under circumstances still to be related.

"Let us arrive at a just appreciation of the dangerous scoundrel whom we
have to deal with," this gentleman said. "His preliminary experiment with
the dog; his resolution to make suspicion an impossibility, by drinking
from the same tea which he had made ready for you; his skilled
preparation of an antidote, the color of which might court appearances by
imitating water--are there many poisoners clever enough to provide
themselves beforehand with such a defence as this? How are you to set the
circumstances in their true light, on your side? You may say that you
threw out the calculations, on which he had relied for securing his own
safety, by drinking his second dose of the antidote while he was out of
the room; and you can appeal to the fainting-fits from which you and he
suffered on the same evening, as a proof that the action of the poison
was partially successful; in your case and in his, because you and he
were insufficiently protected by half doses only of the antidote. A bench
of Jesuits would understand these refinements. A bench of British
magistrates would look at each other, and say: Where is the medical
evidence? No, Mr. Roylake, we must wait. You can't even turn him out of
the cottage before he has had the customary notice to quit. The one thing
to take care of--in c