I shall make old Dill explain his meaning for observing a mystery over it to me.”
“There is no mystery,” answered Barbara, feeling quite sick lest Miss Carlyle should proclaim there was, before the clerks, or her father. “Mamma wanted Mr. Carlyle’s opinion upon a little private business, and not feeling well enough to come herself, she sent me.”
Miss Carlyle did not believe a word. “What business?” asked she unceremoniously.
“It is nothing that could interest you. A trifling matter, relating to a little money. It’s nothing, indeed.”
“Then, if it’s nothing, why were you closeted so long with Archibald?”
“He was asking the particulars,” replied Barbara, recovering her equanimity.
Miss Carlyle sniffed, as she invariably did, when dissenting from a problem. She was sure there was some mystery astir. She turned and walked down the street with Barbara, but she was none the more likely to get anything out of her.
Mr. Carlyle returned to his room, deliberated a few moments, and then rang his bell. A clerk answered it.
“Go to the Buck’s Head. If Mr. Hare and the other magistrates are there, ask them to step over to me.”
The young man did as he was bid, and came back with the noted justices at his heels. They obeyed the summons with alacrity, for they believed they had got themselves into a judicial scrape, and that Mr. Carlyle alone could get them out of it.
“I will not request you to sit down,” began Mr. Carlyle, “for it is barely a moment I shall detain you. The more I think about this man’s having been put in prison, the less I like it; and I have been considering that you had better all five, come and smoke your pipes at my house this evening, when we shall have time to discuss what must be done. Come at seven, not later, and you will find my father’s old jar replenished with the best broadcut, and half a dozen churchwarden pipes. Shall it be so?”
The whole five accepted the invitation eagerly. And they were filing out when Mr. Carlyle laid his finger on the arm of Justice Hare.
“You will be sure to come, Hare,” he whispered. “We could not get on without you; all heads,” with a slight inclination towards those going out, “are not gifted with the clear good sense of yours.”
“Sure and certain,” responded the gratified justice; “fire and water shouldn’t keep me away.”
Soon after Mr. Carlyle was left alone another clerk entered.
“Miss Carlyle is asking to see you, sir, and Colonel Bethel’s come again.”
“Send in Miss Carlyle first,” was the answer. “What is it, Cornelia?”
“Ah! You may well ask what? Saying this morning that you could not dine at six, as usual, and then marching off, and never fixing the hour. How can I give my orders?”
“I thought business would have called me out, but I am not going now. We will dine a little earlier, though, Cornelia, say a quarter before six. I have invited—”
“What’s up, Archibald?” interrupted Miss Carlyle.
“Up! Nothing that I know of. I am very busy, Cornelia, and Colonel Bethel is waiting; I will talk to you at dinner-time. I have invited a party for to-night.”
“A party!” echoed Miss Carlyle.
“Four or five of the justices are coming in to smoke their pipes. You must put out your father’s leaden tobacco-box, and—”
“They shan’t come!” screamed Miss Carlyle. “Do you think I’ll be poisoned with tobacco smoke from a dozen pipes?”
“You need not sit in the room.”
“Nor they either. Clean curtains are just put up throughout the house, and I’ll have no horrid pipes to blacken them.”
“I’ll buy you some new curtains, Cornelia, if their pipes spoil these,” he quietly replied. “And now, Cornelia, I really must beg you to leave me.”
“When I have come to the bottom of this affair with Barbara Hare,” resolutely returned Miss Corny, dropping the point of the contest as to the pipes. “You are very clever, Archie, but you can’t do me. I asked Barbara what she came here for; business for mamma, touching money matters, was her reply. I ask you: to hear your opinion about the scrape the bench have got into, is yours. Now, it’s neither one nor the other; and I tell you, Archibald, I’ll hear what it is. I should like to know what you and Barbara do with a secret between you.”
Mr. Carlyle knew her and her resolute expression well, and he took his course, to tell her the truth. She was, to borrow the words Barbara had used to her brother with regard to him, true as steel. Confide to Miss Carlyle a secret, and she was trustworthy and impervious as he could be; but let her come to suspect that there was a secret which was being kept from her, and she would set to work like a ferret, and never stop until it was unearthed.
Mr. Carlyle bent forward and spoke in a whisper. “I will tell you, if you wish, Cornelia, but it is not a pleasant thing to hear. Richard Hare has returned.”
Miss Carlyle looked perfectly aghast. “Richard Hare! Is he mad?”
“It is not a very sane proceeding. He wants money from his mother, and Mrs. Hare sent Barbara to ask me to manage it for her. No wonder poor Barbara was flurried and nervous, for there’s danger on all sides.”
“Is he at their house?”
“How could he be there and his father in it? He is in hiding two or three miles off, disguised as a laborer, and will be at the grove to-night to receive this money. I have invited the justices to get Mr. Hare safe away from his own house. If he saw Richard, he would undoubtedly give him up to justice, and—putting graver considerations aside—that would be pleasant for neither you nor for me. To have a connection gibbeted for a willful murder would be an ugly blot on the Carlyle escutcheon, Cornelia.”
Miss Carlyle sat in silence revolving the news, a contraction on her ample brow.
“And now you know all, Cornelia, and I do beg you to leave me, for I am overwhelmed with work to-day.”
CHAPTER VI
RICHARD HARE, THE YOUNGER
The bench of justices did not fail to keep their appointment; at seven o’clock they arrived at Miss Carlyle’s, one following closely upon the heels of another. The reader may dissent from the expression “Miss Carlyle’s,” but it is the correct one, for the house was hers, not her brother’s; though it remained his home, as it had been in his father’s time, the house was among the property bequeathed to Miss Carlyle.
Miss Carlyle chose to be present in spite of the pipes and the smoke, and she was soon as deep in the discussion as the justices were. It was said in the town, that she was as good a lawyer as her father had been; she undoubtedly possessed sound judgment in legal matters, and quick penetration. At eight o’clock a servant entered the room and addressed his master.
“Mr. Dill is asking to see you, sir.”
Mr. Carlyle rose, and came back with an open note in his hand.
“I am sorry to find that I must leave you for half an hour; some important business has arisen, but I will be back as soon as I can.”
“Who has sent for you;” immediately demanded Miss Corny.
He gave her a quiet look which she interpreted into a warning not to question. “Mr. Dill is here, and will join you to talk the affair over,” he said to his guests. “He knows the law better than I do; but I will not be long.”
He quitted his house, and walked with a rapid step toward the Grove. The moon was bright as on the previous evening. After he had left the town behind him, and was passing the scattered villas already mentioned, he cast an involuntary glance at the wood, which rose behind them on his left hand. It was called Abbey Wood, from the circumstance that in old days an abbey had stood in its vicinity, all traces of which, save tradition, had passed away. There was one small house,