slightly to the three gentlemen and
walked quietly from the room.

"A singular young fellow!" Major Browne remarked as the door closed
behind him. "I don't quite know what to make of him, but I don't think
he could have committed that murder. It was a cowardly business, and
although I believe he might have a hand in any desperate affair, as
indeed this story he has just told us shows, I would lay my life he
would not do a cowardly one."

"I agree with you," Mr. Simmonds said, "though I own that I have never
been quite able to rid myself of a vague suspicion that he was guilty."

"And I believe he is so still," Mr. Thompson said. "To me there is
something almost devilish about that lad's manner."

"His manner was pleasant enough," Mr. Simmonds said warmly, "before that
affair of Mulready. He was as nice a lad as you would wish to see till
his mother was fool enough to get engaged to that man, who, by the way,
I never liked. No wonder his manner is queer now; so would yours be, or
mine, if we were tried for murder and, though acquitted, knew there was
still a general impression of our guilt."

"Yes, by Jove," the officer said, "I should be inclined to shoot myself.
You are wrong, Mr. Thompson, take my word for it. That young fellow
never committed a cowardly murder. I think you told me, Mr. Simmonds,
that he had intended to go into the army had it not been for this
affair? Well, his majesty has lost a good officer, for that is just the
sort of fellow who would lead a forlorn hope though he knew the breach
was mined in a dozen places. It is a pity, a terrible pity!"

CHAPTER XVIII: NED IS ATTACKED

As Ned had foreseen and resented, the affair at the mill again made him
the chief topic of talk in the neighborhood, and the question of his
guilt or innocence of the murder of his stepfather was again debated
with as much earnestness as it had been when the murder was first
committed. There was this difference, however, that whereas before he
had found but few defenders, for the impression that he was guilty was
almost universal, there were now many who took the other view.

The one side argued that a lad who was ready to blow himself and two
or three hundred men into the air was so desperate a character that he
would not have been likely to hesitate a moment in taking the life of a
man whom he hated, and who had certainly ill treated him. The other side
insisted that one with so much cool courage would not have