‘How do you know?’ says John, shorter and sharper.

Then I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out what I had found in Mrs. Blake’s corner cupboard, and John took it in his hand and looked at it, and whistled long and low.  It was a little white packet, and had been opened and the label torn across, but you could read what was on it plain enough—­’Arsenic—­Poison,’ and the name of the chemist in London.

John’s face was red as fire, like some men’s is when they’re going in fighting, and my Harry’s as white as milk, as some other men’s is at such times.  But as for me, I fell a-crying to think that any woman could be so wicked, and him such a good master and so kind to her, and she having the sole care of him, helpless in her hands as the new-born babe.

And Harry, he patted me on the back, and told me to cheer up and not to cry, and to be a good girl; and presently, my handkerchief being wet through, I stopped, and then John, he said—­

’We’ll bring it home to her yet, Harry, my boy.  I’ll get an order to have poor old father exhumed, and the doctors shall tell us how much of the arsenic that cursed old hag gave him.’

IV I don’t know what you have to do to get an order to open up a grave and look at the poor dead person after it is once put away, but, whatever it was, John knew and did it.

We didn’t tell any one except our dear old parson who buried the old man; and he listened to all we had to say, and shook his head and said, ‘I think you are wrong—­I think you are wrong,’ but that was only natural, him not liking to see his good work disturbed.  But he said he would be there.

Now, no one was told of it, and yet it seemed as if every one for miles round knew more than we did about it.

Afore the day come, old Mrs. Jezebel up at the farm, she met me one day, and she says, ’You’re a pretty puss, aren’t you, howking up my poor dear deceased husband’s remains before they’re hardly cold?  Much good you’ll do yourself.  You’ll end in the workhouse, my fine miss, and I shall come to see you as a lady visitor when you’re dying.’

I tried to get past her, but she wouldn’t let me.  ‘I wish you joy o’ that Harry, cursed young brute!’ says she.  ’It serves him right, it does, to marry a girl out of the gutter!’

And with that—­I couldn’t help it—­I fetched her a smack on the side of the face with the flat of my hand as hard as I could, and bolted off, her after me, and me being young and she stout she couldn’t keep up with me.  Gutter, indeed! and my father a respectable labourer, and known far and wide.

There were several strangers come the day the coffin was got up.  It was a dreadful thing to me to see them digging, not to make a grave to be filled up, but to empty one.  And there were a lot of people there I didn’t know; and the parson, and another parson, seemingly a friend of his, and every one as could get near looking on.