“Then, if I must, I must,” returned the yielding Richard.  “I did love the girl.  I would have waited till I was my own master to make her my wife, though it had been for years and years.  I could not do it, you know, in the face of my father’s opposition.”

“Your wife?” rejoined Mr. Carlyle, with some emphasis.

Richard looked surprised.  “Why, you don’t suppose I meant anything else!  I wouldn’t have been such a blackguard.”

“Well, go on, Richard.  Did she return your love?”

“I can’t be certain.  Sometimes I thought she did, sometimes not; she used to play and shuffle, and she liked too much to be with—­him.  I would think her capricious—­telling me I must not come this evening, and I must not come the other; but I found out they were the evenings when she was expecting him.  We were never there together.”

“You forget that you have not indicted ‘him’ by any name, Richard.  I am at fault.”

Richard Hare bent forward till his black whiskers brushed Mr. Carlyle’s shoulder.  “It was that cursed Thorn.”

Mr. Carlyle remembered the name Barbara had mentioned.  “Who was Thorn?  I never heard of him.”

“Neither had anybody else, I expect, in West Lynne.  He took precious good care of that.  He lives some miles away, and used to come over in secret.”

“Courting Afy?”

“Yes, he did come courting her,” returned Richard, in a savage tone.  “Distance was no barrier.  He would come galloping over at dusk, tie his horse to a tree in the wood, and pass an hour or two with Afy.  In the house, when her father was not at home; roaming about the woods with her, when he was.”

“Come to the point, Richard—­to the evening.”

“Hallijohn’s gun was out of order, and he requested the loan of mine.  I had made an appointment with Afy to be at her house that evening, and I went down after dinner, carrying the gun with me.  My father called after me to know where I was going; I said, out with young Beauchamp, not caring to meet his opposition; and the lie told against me at the inquest.  When I reached Hallijohn’s, going the back way along the fields, and through the wood-path, as I generally did go, Afy came out, all reserve, as she could be at times, and said she was unable to receive me then, that I must go back home.  We had a few words about it, and as we were speaking, Locksley passed, and saw me with the gun in my hand; but it ended in my giving way.  She could do just what she liked with me, for I loved the very ground she trod on.  I gave her the gun, telling her it was loaded, and she took it indoors, shutting me out.  I did not go away; I had a suspicion that she had got Thorn there, though she denied it to me; and I hid myself in some trees near the house.  Again Locksley came in view and saw me there, and called out to know why I was hiding.  I shied further off, and did not answer him—­what were my private movements to him?—­and that also told against me at the inquest.  Not long afterwards—­twenty minutes, perhaps—­I heard a shot, which seemed to be in the direction of the cottage.  ’Somebody having a late pop at the partridges,’ thought I; for the sun was then setting, and at the moment I saw Bethel emerge from the trees, and run in the direction of the cottage.  That was the shot that killed Hallijohn.”