“Hold your tongue, Susan!” angrily cried Edwards.  “You daren’t call your soul your own if Miss Silver was listening.  Bear a hand here, you fellers, and help me fetch Sir Heverard to the house.”

They bore the insensible man to the house, to his room, where Edwards applied himself to his recovery.  Sybilla aided him silently, skillfully.  Meantime, the two gigantic footmen were galloping like mad to the village to rouse the stagnant authorities with their awful news.  And the servants remained huddled together, whispering in affright; then, in a body, proceeded to search the house from attic to cellar.

“My lady may be somewhere in the house,” somebody had suggested.  “Who knows?  Let us try.”

So they tried, and utterly failed, of course.

Morning came at last.  Dull and dreary it came, drenched in rain, the wind wailing desolately over the dark, complaining sea.  All was confusion, not only at the Court, but throughout the whole village.  The terrible news had flown like wild-fire, electrifying all.  My lady was murdered!  Who had done the deed?

Very early in the wet and dismal morning, Miss Silver, braving the elements, wended her way to the Blue Bell Inn.

Where was Mr. Parmalee?  Gone, the landlady said, and gone for good, nobody knew where.

Sybilla stood and stared at her incredulously.  Gone, and without a word to her—­gone without seeing the murdered woman!  What did it mean?

“Are you sure he has really gone?” she asked.  “And how did he go?”

“Sure as sure!” was the landlady’s response; “which he paid his bill to the last farthing, like a gentleman.  And as for how he went, I am sure I can’t say, not being took in his confidence; but the elderly party, she went with him, and it was late last evening.”

Miss Silver was nonplused, perplexed, bewildered, and very anxious.  What did Mr. Parmalee mean?  Where had he gone?  He might spoil all yet.  She had come to see him, and accuse him of the murder—­to frighten him, and make him fly the village.  Circumstances were strongly against him—­his knowledge of her secret; his nocturnal appointment; her disappearance.  Sybilla did not doubt but that he would consider discretion the better part of valor, and fly.

She went back to the house, intensely perplexed.  There the confusion was at its height.  The scabbard had been found near the terrace, with the baronet’s initials thereon.

Men looked into each other’s blank faces, afraid to speak the frightful thoughts that filled their minds.

And in his room Sir Everard lay in a deep stupor—­it was not sleep.  Sybilla, upon the first faint signs of consciousness, had administered a powerful opiate.

“He must sleep,” she said, resolutely, to Edwards.  “It may save his life and his reason.  He is utterly worn out, and every nerve in his body is strung to its utmost tension.  Let him sleep, poor fellow!”