Mr. Harmer was sitting at the table, with his back to the door, and did not turn round at their approach. They went up. Beside him on the table lay an open letter--the one from Sophy;--in his hand was a pen, and before him a sheet of paper. On it he had written: "My dearest Sophy, come back; I forgive"--but the handwriting was strangely indistinct, and the last word, the word "forgive," was large and sprawling, like a schoolboy's writing, and then the pen stopped, and had stopped for ever;--Herbert Harmer was dead. CHAPTER XIII. A BAD BUSINESS. "Mr. Harmer is dead! Sophy Needham is missing!" Such was the news a groom, riding into Canterbury for a doctor, brought; such was the telegram which a friend at once sent down to us at Ramsgate. Mr. Harmer dead! Sophy Needham missing! It flashed like wildfire through Canterbury, and the quiet old town was again shaken out of its lethargy by the intelligence. Mr. Harmer, during his lifetime, had been a standing topic of conversation; he had on several occasions quite roused it from the even tenor of its way, but this last sensation was greater and more astounding than any of its predecessors, and Canterbury enjoyed it with proportionate gusto. "Sophy Needham eloped with that notorious reprobate, Robert Gregory"--for the Misses Harmer, by their invectives on reading the letter, at once had told those round them with whom Sophy had fled-- "and poor Mr. Harmer gone off in a fit in consequence!!" It was indeed a terrible affair, and it was not mended in the telling. By the time the tale had made its round, it had swollen to extraordinary proportions--fresh additions were made by each mouth through which it passed, until at last it was extremely difficult to find out what the truth of the matter was. From the simple report that Sophy Needham had eloped with Robert Gregory, and that it had killed poor Mr. Harmer, the transition was easy to--"and _he_ had killed poor Mr. Harmer;" and details of the supposed murder grew till it became a tragedy of the most coldblooded description. The groom's statement that the Misses Harmer were in a dreadful state about it, soon lost the last two words, and grew into,--"The Misses Harmer were also attacked, and were lying in a dreadful state." Altogether, although Robert Gregory and Sophy were undoubtedly much to blame, and had acted very wrongly, I believe they would hardly have recognised themselves or their doings, in the two fiends in human shape, whose deeds were commented upon in Canterbury that afternoon. The next day the real truth of the story became known, and there was some feeling of disappointment that things were not as bad as had been reported; but even then the opinion in respect to Sophy and her lover were hardly modified;--give a dog a bad name and you may as well hang him.