They had a beautiful effigy of your father swinging on a pole, with a placard on his breast, on which was written, ‘The robber of the widow and the orphan,’ and they were singing Welsh songs.  Only I saw Jones, who was more than half drunk, cursing and swearing in Welsh and English.  When the auctioneer began to sell, Jones went into the house and Bones went with him.  After enough had been sold to pay the debt, and while the mob was still laughing and shouting, suddenly the back door of the house opened and out rushed Jones, now quite drunk, a gun in his hand and Bones hanging on to his coat-tails.  I was talking to the auctioneer at the moment, and my belief is that the brute thought that I was Johnson.  At any rate, before anything could be done he lifted the gun and fired, at me, as I think.  The charge, however, passed my head and hit poor Johnson full in the face, killing him dead.  That is all the story.”

“And quite enough, too,” said Beatrice with a shudder.  “What times we live in!  I feel quite sick.”

Supper that night was a very melancholy affair.  Old Mr. Granger was altogether thrown off his balance; and even Elizabeth’s iron nerves were shaken.

“It could not be worse, it could not be worse,” moaned the old man, rising from the table and walking up and down the room.

“Nonsense, father,” said Elizabeth the practical.  “He might have been shot before he had sold the hay, and then you would not have got your tithe.”

Geoffrey could not help smiling at this way of looking at things, from which, however, Mr. Granger seemed to draw a little comfort.  From constantly thinking about it, and the daily pressure of necessity, money had come to be more to the old man than anything else in the world.

Hardly was the meal done when three reporters arrived and took down Geoffrey’s statement of what had occurred, for publication in various papers, while Beatrice went away to see about packing Effie’s things.  They were to start by a train leaving for London at half-past eight on the following morning.  When Beatrice came back it was half-past ten, and in his irritation of mind Mr. Granger insisted upon everybody going to bed.  Elizabeth shook hands with Geoffrey, congratulating him on his escape as she did so, and went at once; but Beatrice lingered a little.  At last she came forward and held out her hand.

“Good-night, Mr. Bingham,” she said.

“Good-night.  I hope that this is not good-bye also,” he added with some anxiety.

“Of course not,” broke in Mr. Granger.  “Beatrice will go and see you off.  I can’t; I have to go and meet the coroner about the inquest, and Elizabeth is always busy in the house.  Luckily they won’t want you; there were so many witnesses.”

“Then it is only good-night,” said Beatrice.