"That's to be seen," he said. "No hanging matter," he continued humorously, "I hope. And as it's good law that everybody's innocent--that's so, Mr. Dobbie, is it not?"--he addressed the clerk--"until he's found to be guilty, let somebody set the young woman a chair."
"I can stand!" she cried.
"Nay, you sit down!" muttered a gruff voice in her ear. And a hand--it was Mrs. Gilson's--pressed her down in the chair. "And you answer straight out," the woman continued coolly, in defiance of the scandalised look which Mr. Dobbie, the clerk, cast upon her, "and there's not one of 'em can do you any harm."
The magistrate nodded.
"That's true," he said tolerantly, "always supposing that you've done no wrong, my girl--no wrong beyond getting into bad company, as I trust will turn out to be the case. Now, Mr. Dobbie, take down her answers. What's your name, my girl, first?"
Henrietta looked at him steadily; she was trying to place herself in these new conditions. Something like composure was coming back to her flushed and frightened face. She reflected; and having reflected, she was silent.
He fancied that she had not heard, or did not understand.
"Your name, young woman," he repeated, "and your last place of abode? Speak up! And don't be afraid."
But she did not answer.
He frowned.
"Come, come," he said. "Did you hear me? Where is your home, and what do you call yourself? You are not the man's wife, I know. We know as much as that, you see, so you may as well be frank."
"What is the charge against me?" She spoke slowly, and her face was now set and stubborn. "Of what am I accused?"
Mr. Hornyold's face turned a brick red. He did not rule three parishes through three curates, reserving to himself only the disciplinary powers he was now exercising, to be thwarted by a run-the-country girl; who, in spite of her looks, was, ten to one, no better than the imprudent wenches the overseers were continually bringing before him. He knew at least the company she kept. He raised his voice.
"I am not here to answer your questions!" he said, bending his brows. "But you mine! You mine!" he repeated, rapping the table sharply. "Do you hear? Now, you will at once tell me----"
He broke off. The clerk had touched his sleeve and was whispering in his ear. He frowned impatiently, but listened. And after a moment he shrugged his shoulders.
"Very well," he said. "Tell her!"
The clerk, a shabby man with a scratch wig and a little glass ink-bottle at his buttonhole, raised his eyes, and looking at her over his glasses, spoke:
"You are not yet charged," he said; "but if you cannot give a satisfactory account of yourself you will be charged with receiving, harbouring, and assisting one William Walterson the younger, otherwise Stewart, otherwise Malins, against whom indictments for various felonies and treason felonies have been found. And with aiding and abetting the escape of the said William Walterson, in whose company you have been found. And with being accessory after the fact to various felonies----"
"To murder!" said Mr. Hornyold, cutting him short emphatically. "To murder! amongst other things. That is the charge, if you must know it. So now"--he rapped the table sharply--"answer at once, and the truth. What is your name? And where was your last place of abode?"
But Henrietta, if she were willing to answer, could not. At the sound of that dreadful word "murder!"--they hanged lightly, so lightly in those days!--the colour had fled from her face. The darkness that had confused her a while before hid all. She kept her seat, she even retained her erect posture; but the hands which she raised before her as if to ward off something groped idly in the air.
Murder! No wonder that she lost consciousness for a moment, or that Hornyold, secretly relishing her beauty, thought that he had found the weapon that would soon bring her to her knees! or that the little audience by the door, listening awestruck, held their breath. The wonder was that only one of them judged from the girl's gesture that she was fainting. Only one acted. Mrs. Gilson stepped forward and shook her roughly by the shoulder.
"Words break no bones!" the landlady said without ceremony--and not without an angry look at the clerk, who raised his pen as if he would interpose. "Don't you make a fool of yourself. But do you tell them what they want to know. And your friends will settle with them. Murder, indeed! Pack of boddles!"
"Very good advice," said the magistrate, smiling indulgently. "But----"
"But you must not interfere!" snapped the clerk--who kept the books of the Salutation in Ambleside and not of the Low Wood Inn.
"Haven't you sense to see the girl is fainting?" the landlady replied wrathfully.
"Oh, well----"
"I am better now," Henrietta said bravely. And she drew a deep breath. A little colour--induced perhaps by Hornyold's unsparing gaze--was coming back to her cheeks. "Would you--can I have a glass of water?" she murmured.
Mrs. Gilson was bustling to the door to give the order when it opened, and Mr. Bishop, who had gone to it a moment before, took in a glass of wine, and, secretly pleased that he had anticipated the need, handed it to her. Mrs. Gilson took it with a grunt of distrust, and made the girl swallow it; while the magistrate waited and watched, and thought that he had never seen a young woman who was so handsome, pale or red, fainting or fierce. And so fresh! so admirably, astonishingly fresh for the companion of such a man. A good many thoughts of various kinds flitted through his mind as he watched her, marking now the luxuriance of her fair hair, now the white chin, small but firm, and now the faint, faint freckles that, like clots in cream, only added to the delicacy of her complexion. He waited without impatience until the girl had drunk the wine, and when he spoke it was in a tone approaching the paternal.
"Now, my dear," he said, "you are going to be a good girl and sensible, I am sure. We don't want to send you to prison to herd with people with whom, to judge from your appearance, you have not been wont to mix. And therefore we give you this opportunity--there's no need we should, you know--of telling us who you are, and whence you come, and what you know; that if it appears that you have fallen into this man's company in ignorance, and not knowing what manner of man he was, we may prevent this charge appearing, and instead of committing you to Appleby, place you here or elsewhere under bond to appear. Which, in a case so serious as this, is not a course we could adopt were you not so very young, and," with a humorous look at the group by the door, "so very good-looking! So now be a good girl and don't be afraid, but tell me at once who you are, and where you joined this man."
"If I do not," Henrietta said, looking at him with clear eyes, "must I go to prison?"
"Appleby gaol," said the clerk, glancing over his glasses.
"Then you must send me there," she replied, a little faintly. "For I cannot tell you."
"Don't be a fool!" growled Mrs. Gilson in her ear.
"I cannot tell you," Henrietta repeated more firmly.
Mr. Hornyold stared. He was growing angry, for he was not accustomed to be set at naught. After their fashion they all stared.
"Come, come, my dear," the runner remonstrated smoothly. "If you don't tell us, we shall think there's more behind."
She did not answer.
"And that being so, it's only a matter of time to learn what it is," the runner continued cunningly. "Tell us now and save time, because we are sure to get to know. Young women as pretty as you are not hard to trace."
But she shook her head. And the face Bishop called pretty was stubborn. The group by the door, marking for future gossip every particular of her appearance, the stuff of her riding-habit, the fineness of her linen, the set of her head, made certain that she was no common trollope. They wondered what would happen to her, and hoped, the more tender-hearted, that there would be no scene, and no hysterics to end it.
The clerk raised his pen in