twas whispered abroad that Uncle Philip had
made his way to Falmouth, and slipped across to Guernsey. Time passed
on, and the dragooners were seen no more, nor the handsome
devil-may-care face of Sergeant Basket. Up at Constantine, where he had
always contrived to billet himself, 'tis to be thought pretty Madam Noy
pined to see him again, kicking his spurs in the porch and smiling out
of his gay brown eyes; for her face fell away from its plump condition,
and the hunger in her eyes grew and grew. But a more remarkable fact
was that her old husband--who wouldn't have yearned after the dragoon,
ye'd have thought--began to dwindle and fall away too. By the New Year
he was a dying man, and carried his doom on his face. And on New Year's
Day he straddled his mare for the last time, and rode over to Looe, to
Doctor Gale's.

"Goody-losh!" cried the doctor, taken aback by his appearance--
"What's come to ye, Noy?"

"Death!" says Noy. "Doctor, I hain't come for advice, for before this
day week I'll be a clay-cold corpse. I come to ax a favour. When they
summon ye, before lookin' at my body--that'll be past help--go you to
the little left-top corner drawer o' my wife's bureau, an' there ye'll
find a packet. You're my executor," says he, "and I leaves ye to deal
wi' that packet as ye thinks fit."

With that, the farmer rode away home-along, and the very day week he
went dead.

The doctor, when called over, minded what the old chap had said, and
sending Madam Noy on some pretence to the kitchen, went over and
unlocked the little drawer with a duplicate key, that the farmer had
unhitched from his watch-chain and given him. There was no parcel of
letters, as he looked to find, but only a small packet crumpled away in
the corner. He pulled it out and gave a look, and a sniff, and another
look: then shut the drawer, locked it, strode straight down-stairs to
his horse and galloped away.

In three hours' time, pretty Madam Noy was in the constables' hands upon
the charge of murdering her husband by poison.

They tried her, next Spring Assize, at Bodmin, before the Lord Chief
Justice. There wasn't evidence enough to put Sergeant Basket in the
dock alongside of her--though 'twas freely guessed he knew more than
anyone (saving the prisoner herself) about the arsenic that was found in
the little drawer and inside the old man's body. He was subpoena'd from
Plymouth, and cross-examined by a great hulking King's Counsel for