ble and the rest went down, while the Captain
and I stood upon the plank, looking at the four of them.

"For a long time they looked about, according to their attitudes,
without finding any thing more than the signs of the manner in which the
poor lord fell, and of these the constable pulled out a book and made
a pencil memorial. But presently Jacob, a spry sort of man, cried,
'Hulloa! whatever have I got hold of here? Many a good craw-fish have I
pulled out from this bank when the water comes down the gully, but never
one exactly like this here afore.'

"'Name of the Lord!' cried the constable, jumping behind the hawthorn
stump; 'don't point it at me, you looby! It's loaded, loaded one barrel,
don't you see? Put it down, with the muzzle away from me.'

"'Hand it to me, Jacob,' the Captain said. 'You understand a gun, and
this goes off just the same.' Constable Jobbins have no fear. 'Yes, it
is exactly as I thought. This pistol is one of the double-barreled pair
which I bought to take to India. The barrels are rifled; it shoots
as true as any rifle, and almost as hard up to fifty yards. The right
barrel has been fired, the other is still loaded. The bullet I took from
my father's body most certainly came from this pistol.'

"'Can 'e say, can 'e say then, who done it, master?' asked Jacob, a man
very sparing of speech, but ready at a beck to jump at constable and
miller's men, if only law was with him. 'Can 'e give a clear account,
and let me chuck 'un in the river?'

"'No, Jacob, I can do nothing of the kind,' your father answered; while
the rural man came up and faced things, not being afraid of a fight half
so much as he was of an accident; by reason of his own mother having
been blown up by a gunpowder start at Dartford, yet came down all
right, miss, and had him three months afterward, according to his
own confession; nevertheless, he came up now as if he had always been
upright, in the world, and he said, 'My lord, can you explain all this?'

"Your father looked at him with one of his strange gazes, as if he were
measuring the man while trying his own inward doing of his own mind.
Proud as your father was, as proud as ever can be without cruelty, it
is my firm belief, Miss Erema, going on a woman's judgment, that if the
man's eyes had come up to my master's sense of what was virtuous, my
master would have up and told him the depth and contents of his mind and
heart, although totally gone beyond him.

"But Jo