“That I should have thought quite enough, were I in your place, without inviting a detailed description of the whole process by which this detestable butchery was consummated.  What more than the simple knowledge of the man’s guilt does any mortal desire; guilty, or not guilty, is the plain question which the law asks, and no more; take my advice, sir, as a poor Protestant layman, and leave the acts of the confessional and inquisition to Popish priests.”

“Nay, Mr. Marston, you greatly misconceive me; as matters stand, there exists among the coroner’s jury, and thus among the public, some faint and unfounded suspicion of the possibility of Merton’s having had an accessory or accomplice in the perpetration of this foul murder.”

“It is a lie, sir—­a malignant, d——­d lie—­the jury believe no such thing, nor the public neither,” said Marston, starting in his saddle, and speaking in a voice of thunder; “you have been crammed with lies, sir; malicious, unmeaning, vindictive lies; lies invented to asperse my family, and torture my feelings; suggested in my presence by that scoundrel Mervyn, and scouted by the common sense of the jury.”

“I do assure you,” replied Doctor Danvers, in a voice which seemed scarcely audible, after the stunning and passionate explosion of Marston’s wrath, “I did not imagine that you could feel thus sorely upon the point; nay, I thought that you yourself were not without such painful doubts.”

“Again, I tell you, sir,” said Marston, in a tone somewhat calmer, but no less stern, “such doubts as you describe have no existence; your unsuspecting ear has been alarmed by a vindictive wretch, an old scoundrel who has scarce a passion left but spite towards me; few such there are, thank God; few such villains as would, from a man’s very calamities, distil poison to kill the peace and character of his family.”

“I am sorry, Mr. Marston,” said the clergyman, “you have formed so ill an opinion of a neighbor, and I am very sure that Mr. Mervyn meant you no ill in frankly expressing whatever doubts still rested on his mind, after the evidence was taken.”

“He did—­the scoundrel!” said Marston, furiously striking his hand, in which his whip was clutched, upon his thigh; “he did mean to wound and torture me; and with the same object he persists in circulating what he calls his doubts.  Meant me no ill, forsooth! why, my great God, sir, could any man be so stupid as not to perceive that the suggestion of such suspicions—­absurd, contradictory, incredible as they were—­was precisely the thing to exasperate feelings sufficiently troubled already, and not content with raising the question, where it was scouted, as I said, as soon as named, the vindictive slanderer proceeds to propagate and publish his pretended surmises—­d——­n him.”

“Mr. Marston, you will pardon me when I say that, as a Christian minister, I cannot suffer a spirit so ill as that you manifest, and language so unseemly as that you have just uttered, to pass unreproved,” said Danvers, solemnly.  “If you will cherish those bitter and unchristian feelings, at least for the brief space that I am with you, command your fierce, unbecoming words.”