“Why not?” she said.  “Why may something not have happened to one of them?”

She placed the laudanum in the cupboard, locked it, and put the key in her packet.  “Time enough still,” she thought, “before Monday.  I’ll wait till the captain comes back.”

After some consultation downstairs, it was agreed that the servant should sit up that night, in expectation of her master’s return.  The day passed quietly, without events of any kind.  Magdalen dreamed away the hours over a book.  A weary patience of expectation was all she felt now—­the poignant torment of thought was dulled and blunted at last.  She passed the day and the evening in the parlor, vaguely conscious of a strange feeling of aversion to going back to her own room.  As the night advanced, as the noises ceased indoors and out, her restlessness began to return.  She endeavored to quiet herself by reading.  Books failed to fix her attention.  The newspaper was lying in a corner of the room:  she tried the newspaper next.

She looked mechanically at the headings of the articles; she listlessly turned over page after page, until her wandering attention was arrested by the narrative of an Execution in a distant part of England.  There was nothing to strike her in the story of the crime, and yet she read it.  It was a common, horribly common, act of bloodshed—­the murder of a woman in farm-service by a man in the same employment who was jealous of her.  He had been convicted on no extraordinary evidence, he had been hanged under no unusual circumstances.  He had made his confession, when he knew there was no hope for him, like other criminals of his class, and the newspaper had printed it at the end of the article, in these terms: 

“I kept company with the deceased for a year or thereabouts.  I said I would marry her when I had money enough.  She said I had money enough now.  We had a quarrel.  She refused to walk out with me any more; she wouldn’t draw me my beer; she took up with my fellow-servant, David Crouch.  I went to her on the Saturday, and said I would marry her as soon as we could be asked in church if she would give up Crouch.  She laughed at me.  She turned me out of the wash-house, and the rest of them saw her turn me out.  I was not easy in my mind.  I went and sat on the gate—­the gate in the meadow they call Pettit’s Piece.  I thought I would shoot her.  I went and fetched my gun and loaded it.  I went out into Pettit’s Piece again.  I was hard put to it to make up my mind.  I thought I would try my luck—­I mean try whether to kill her or not—–­by throwing up the Spud of the plow into the air.  I said to myself, if it falls flat, I’ll spare her; if it falls point in the earth, I’ll kill her.  I took a good swing with it, and shied it up.  It fell point in the earth.  I went and shot her.  It was a bad job, but I did it.  I did it, as they said I did it at the trial.  I hope the Lord will have mercy on me.  I wish my mother to have my old clothes.  I have no more to say.”