“Have you watched him pretty close for the last few days?” said the Doctor.

“W’ll, yes,—­I’ve had my eye on him consid’ble o’ the time.  I haf to be pooty shy abaout it, or he’ll find aout th’t I’m on his tracks.  I don’ want him to get a spite ag’inst me, ’f I c’n help it; he looks to me like one o’ them kind that kerries what they call slung-shot, ‘n’ hits ye on the side o’ th’ head with ’em so suddin y’ never know what hurts ye.”

“Why,” said the Doctor, sharply,—­“have you ever seen him with any such weapon about him?”

“W’ll, no,—­I caan’t say that I hev,” Abel answered.  “On’y he looks kin’ o’ dangerous.  Maybe he’s all jest ’z he ought to be,—­I caan’t say that he a’n’t,—­but he’s aout late nights, ‘n’ lurkin’ raonn’ jest ’z ef he was spyin’ somebody, ‘n’ somehaow I caan’t help mistrustin’ them Portagee-lookin’ fellahs.  I caan’t keep the run o’ this chap all the time; but I’ve a notion that old black woman daown ’t the mansion-haouse knows ’z much abaout him ’z anybody.”

The Doctor paused a moment, after hearing this report from his private detective, and then got into his chaise, and turned Caustic’s head in the direction of the Dudley mansion.  He had been suspicious of Dick from the first.  He did not like his mixed blood, nor his looks, nor his ways.  He had formed a conjecture about his projects early.  He had made a shrewd guess as to the probable jealousy Dick would feel of the schoolmaster, had found out something of his movements, and had cautioned Mr. Bernard,—­as we have seen.  He felt an interest in the young man,—­a student of his own profession, an intelligent and ingenuously unsuspecting young fellow, who had been thrown by accident into the companionship or the neighborhood of two persons, one of whom he knew to be dangerous, and the other he believed instinctively might be capable of crime.

The Doctor rode down to the Dudley mansion solely for the sake of seeing old Sophy.  He was lucky enough to find her alone in her kitchen.  He began taking with her as a physician; he wanted to know how her rheumatism had been.  The shrewd old woman saw through all that with her little beady black eyes.  It was something quite different he had come for, and old Sophy answered very briefly for her aches and ails.

“Old folks’ bones a’n’t like young folks’,” she said.  “It’s the Lord’s doin’s, ‘n’ ‘t a’n’t much matter.  I sha’n’ be long roan’ this kitchen.  It’s the young Missis, Doctor,—­it ’s our Elsie,—­it ’s the baby, as we use’ t’ call her,—­don’ you remember, Doctor?  Seventeen year ago, ‘n’ her poor mother cryin’ for her,—­’Where is she? where is she?  Let me see her! ‘—­’n’ how I run up-stairs,—­I could run then,—­’n’ got the coral necklace ‘n’ put it round her little neck, ‘n’ then showed her to her mother,—­’n’ how her mother looked at her, ‘n’ looked, ‘n’ then put out her poor thin fingers ‘n’ lifted the necklace,—­’n’ fell right back on her piller, as white as though she was laid out to bury?”