they all walked quite solemn and
steady-like down the stairs together.

It was a strange sight. There we were standing and leaning about the
dark hall, staring and wondering, and these people walking down to meet
us like ghosts, without speaking or anything else.

Mr. Knightley was a tall, handsome man, with a grand black beard that
came down to his chest. He walked like a lord, and had that kind of
manner with him that comes to people that have always been used to be
waited on and have everything found for them in this world. As for
his wife, she was given in to be the handsomest woman in the whole
countryside--tall and graceful, with a beautiful smile, and soft fair
hair. Everybody liked and respected her, gentle and simple--everybody
had a good word for her. You couldn't have got any one to say different
for a hundred pounds. There are some people, here and there, like this
among the gentlefolk, and, say what you like, it does more to make coves
like us look a little closer at things and keep away from what's wrong
and bad than all the parsons' talk twice over. Mrs. Knightley was the
only woman that ever put me in mind of Miss Falkland, and I can't say
more than that.

So, as I said before, it was quite a picture to see them walk slowly and
proudly down and sweep into the hall as if they'd been marching into a
ballroom. We had both seen them at the ball at the Turon, and everybody
agreed they were the handsomest couple there.

Now they were entering their own hall in a different way. But you
couldn't have told much of what they felt by their faces. He was a proud
man, and felt bitterly enough that he had to surrender to a gang of
men that he hated and despised, that he'd boasted he could run down and
capture in a month. Now the tables were turned. He and his beautiful
wife were in our power, and, to make matters worse, one of our band lay
dead, beside the inner wall, killed by his hand.

What was to be his doom? And who could say how such a play might end?

I looked at our men. As they stepped on to the floor of the hall and
looked round Mrs. Knightley smiled. She looked to me like an angel from
heaven that had come by chance into the other place and hadn't found
out her mistake. I saw Starlight start as he looked at her. He was still
leaning against the wall, and there was a soft, sorrowful look in his
eyes, like I remember noticing once before while he was talking to
Aileen about his early days, a thing he ne