The lad’s exultation was horrible.  Marcella waved him aside and ran on.  A man on horseback appeared on the road in front of her leading from Widrington to the village.  She recognised Aldous Raeburn, who had checked his horse in sudden amazement as he saw her talking to the boy.

“My darling! what are you here for?  Oh! go home—­go home!—­out of this horrible business.  They have sent for me as a magistrate.  Dynes is alive—­I beg you!—­go home!”

She shook her head, out of breath and speechless with running.  At the same moment she and he, looking to the right, caught sight of the crowd standing in front of Hurd’s cottage.

A man ran out from it, seeing the horse and its rider.

“Muster Raeburn!  Muster Raeburn!  They’ve cotched ’im; Jenkins has got ’im.”

“Ah!” said Aldous, drawing a long, stern breath; “he didn’t try to get off then?  Marcella!—­you are not going there—­to that house!”

He spoke in a tone of the strongest remonstrance.  Her soul rose in anger against it.

“I am going to her” she said panting;—­“don’t wait.”

And she left him and hurried on.

As soon as the crowd round the cottage saw her coming, they divided to let her pass.

“She’s quiet now, miss,” said a woman to her significantly, nodding towards the hovel.  “Just after Jenkins got in you could hear her crying out pitiful.”

“That was when they wor a-handcuffin’ him,” said a man beside her.

Marcella shuddered.

“Will they let me in?” she asked.

“They won’t let none ov us in,” said the man.  “There’s Hurd’s sister,” and he pointed to a weeping woman supported by two others.  “They’ve kep’ her out.  But here’s the inspector, miss; you ask him.”

The inspector, a shrewd officer of long experience, fetched in haste from a mile’s distance, galloped up, and gave his horse to a boy.

Marcella went up to him.

He looked at her with sharp interrogation.  “You are Miss Boyce?  Miss Boyce of Mellor?”

“Yes, I want to go to the wife; I will promise not to get in your way.”

He nodded.  The crowd let them pass.  The inspector knocked at the door, which was cautiously unlocked by Jenkins, and the two went in together.

“She’s a queer one,” said a thin, weasel-eyed man in the crowd to his neighbour.  “To think o’ her bein’ in it—­at this time o’ day.  You could see Muster Raeburn was a tellin’ of her to go ’ome.  But she’s allus pampered them Hurds.”

The speaker was Ned Patton, old Patton’s son, and Hurd’s companion on many a profitable night-walk.  It was barely a week since he had been out with Hurd on another ferreting expedition, some of the proceeds of which were still hidden in Patton’s outhouse.  But at the present moment he was one of the keenest of the crowd, watching eagerly for the moment when he should see his old comrade come out, trapped and checkmated, bound safely and surely to the gallows.  The natural love of incident and change which keeps life healthy had been starved in him by his labourer’s condition.  This sudden excitement had made a brute of him.