“You will help me to learn the truth?”

“Surely!  Surely! my Gorgious one.  And now,” Mother Cockleshell gave a tug at the donkey’s mouth, “I goes my ways.”

“But where can I find you again?”

“When the time comes the mouth will open, and them as thinks they’re high will find themselves in the dust.  Aye, and maybe lower, if six feet of good earth lies atop, and them burning in lime, uncoffined and unblessed.”

Miss Greeby was masculine and fearless, but there was something so weird about this mystic sentence, which hinted at capital punishment, that she shrank back nervously.  Mother Cockleshell, delighted to see that she had made an impression, climbed on to the gray donkey and made a progress through the camp.  Passing by Chaldea’s caravan she spat on it and muttered a word or so, which did not indicate that she wished a blessing to rest on it.  Chaldea did not show herself, so the deposed queen was accompanied to the outskirts of the wood by the elder gypsies, mourning loudly.  But when they finally halted to see the last of Mother Cockleshell, she raised her hand and spoke authoritatively.

“I go and I come, my children.  Forget not, ye Romans, that I say so much.  When the seed needs rain it falls.  Sarishan, brothers and sisters all.”  And with this strange speech, mystical to the last, she rode away into the setting sun, on the gray donkey, looking more like an almshouse widow than ever.

As for Miss Greeby, she strode out of the camp and out of the Abbot’s Wood, and made for the Garvington Arms, where she had left her baggage.  What Mother Cockleshell knew, she did not guess; what Mother Cockleshell intended to do, she could not think; but she was satisfied that Chaldea would in some way pay for her triumph.  And the downfall of the girl was evidently connected with the unravelling of the murder mystery.  In a witchly way, as the old woman would have said herself, she intended to adjust matters.

“I’ll leave things so far in her hands,” thought Miss Greeby.  “Now for Silver.”

CHAPTER XV.

Guesswork.

Whether Miss Greeby found a difficulty, as was probable, in getting Silver to hand over the forged letter, or whether she had decided to leave the solution of this mystery to Mother Cockleshell, it is impossible to say.  But she certainly did not put in an appearance at Lady Agnes Pine’s town house to report progress until after the new year.  Nor in the meantime did she visit Lambert, although she wrote to say that she induced the secretary to delay his threatened exposure.  The position of things was therefore highly unsatisfactory, since the consequent suspense was painful both to Agnes and her lover.  And of course the widow had been duly informed of the interview at the cottage, and naturally expected events to move more rapidly.