“Richard, you cannot tell; you did not see it done.”

“I know that no man could have rushed out in that frantic manner, with those signs of guilt and fear about him, unless he had been engaged in a bad deed,” was Richard Hare’s answer.  “It could have been no one else.”

“Afy declared he was with her,” repeated Mr. Carlyle.

“Look here, sir, you are a sharp man, and folks say I am not, but I can see things and draw my reasoning as well as they can, perhaps.  If Thorn were not Hallijohn’s murderer, why should he be persecuting me—­what would he care about me?  And why should his face turn livid, as it has done, each time he has seen my eyes upon him?  Whether he did commit the murder, or whether he didn’t, he must know that I did not, because he came upon me, waiting, as he was tearing from the cottage.”

Dick’s reasoning was not bad.

“Another thing,” he resumed.  “Afy swore at the inquest that she was alone when the deed was done; that she was alone at the back of the cottage, and knew nothing about it till afterwards.  How could she have sworn she was alone, if Thorn was with her?”

The fact has entirely escaped Mr. Carlyle’s memory in his conversation with Afy, or he would not have failed to point out the discrepancy, and to inquire how she could reconcile it.  Yet her assertion to him had been most positive and solemn.  There were difficulties in the matter which he could not reconcile.

“Now that I have got over my passion for Afy, I can see her faults, Mr. Carlyle.  She’d no more tell an untruth than I should stick—­”

A most awful thundering at the room door—­loud enough to bring the very house down.  No officers of justice, searching for a fugitive, ever made a louder.  Richard Hare, his face turned to chalk, his eyes starting, and his own light hair bristling up with horror, struggled into his wet smock-frock after a fashion, the tails up about his ears and the sleeves hanging, forced on his hat and his false whiskers, looked round in a bewildered manner for some cupboard or mouse-hole into which he might creep, and, seeing none, rushed to the fireplace and placed his foot on the fender.  That he purposed an attempt at chimney-climbing was evident, though how the fire would have agreed with his pantaloons, not to speak of what they contained, poor Dick appeared completely to ignore.  Mr. Carlyle drew him back, keeping his calm, powerful hand upon his shoulder, while certain sounds in an angry voice were jerked through the keyhole.

“Richard, be a man, put aside this weakness, this fear.  Have I not told you that harm shall not come near you in my house?”

“It may be that officer from London; he may have brought half a dozen more with him!” gasped the unhappy Richard.  “I said they might have dodged me all the way here.”

“Nonsense.  Sit you down, and be at rest, it is only Cornelia; and she will be as anxious to shield you from danger as I can be.”