“Alas, and well-a-day! that it should have come to this.  Apoplexy—­you see, apoplexy caught her as she slept:  we may as well get her buried at once:  it is unfortunately too clear a case for any necessity to open the body; and our young master is coming down on Tuesday, and I could not allow my aunt’s corpse to be so disrespectful as to stop till it became offensive.  I will go to the vicar myself immediately.”

“Begging pardon, Mr. Jennings,” urged Jonathan Floyd, “there’s a strange mark here about the throat, poor old ’ooman.”

“Ay,” added Sarah, “and now I come to think of it, Mrs. Quarles’s room-door was ajar; and bless me, the lawn-door’s not locked neither!  Who could have murdered her?”

“Murdered? there’s no murder here, silly wench,” said Jennings, with a nervous sneer.

“I don’t know that, Mr. Simon,” gruffly interposed the coachman; “it’s a case for a coroner, I’ll be bail; so here I goes to bring him:  let all bide as it is, fellow-sarvents; murder will out, they say.”

And off he set directly—­not without a shrewd remark from Mr. Jennings, about letting him escape that way; which seemed all very sage and likely, till the honest man came back within the hour, and a posse comitatus at his heels.

We all know the issue of that inquest.

Now, if any one requests to be informed how Jennings came to be looked for as usual in his room, after that unavailing search last night, I reply, this newer, stronger excitement for the minute made the house oblivious of that mystery; and if people further will persist to know, how that mystery of his absence was afterwards explained (though I for my part would gladly have said nothing of the bailiff’s own excuse), let it be enough to hint, that Jennings winked with a knowing and gallant expression of face; alluded to his private key, and a secret return at two in the morning from some disreputable society in the neighbourhood; made the men laugh, and the women blush; and, altogether, as he might well have other hats and coats, the delicate affair was not unlikely.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

DOUBTS.

AND so, this crock of gold—­gained through extortion, by the frauds of every day, the meannesses of every hour—­this concrete oppression to the hireling in his wages—­this mass of petty pilferings from poverty—­this continuous obstruction to the charities of wealth—­this cockatrice’s egg—­this offspring of iniquity—­had already been baptized in blood before poor Acton found it, and slain its earthly victim ere it wrecked his faith; already had it been perfected by crime, and destroyed the murderer’s soul, before it had endangered the life of slandered innocence.

Is there yet more blessing in the crock? more fearful interest still, to carry on its story to an end?  Must another sacrifice bleed before the shrine of Mammon, and another head lie crushed beneath the heel of that monster—­his disciple?