"Do you?" said the woman, laughing aloud. "Now I will show you. You have been thinking of Chandos Winslow, your half-brother, and of the murder of good old Roberts, the steward; and you have been fancying that another hand, as near akin to your own, might have shed the blood that is charged upon Chandos Winslow's; and you are going down to Northferry to see what you can make out of the case." "A marvellous good guess," replied Lockwood; "but I now recollect you, my pretty brown lass. You are the mother of the boy down at the cottage; and, like all your people, you are good at putting two and two together." "I am the boy's mother," answered the woman; "but you are wrong in thinking that is my only way of knowing. I see more things than you fancy, hear more than people dream of; and I tell you, you will not get to Northferry to-day nor to-morrow either; nor will you go to the assizes, nor give your evidence in court: and if you did, you would only mar what you try to mend." "That won't stop me," answered Lockwood sturdily; "truth is truth, and it shall be told: 'Magna est veritas, et prævalebit,' my pretty lass. I will tell my plain, straightforward tale in spite of any one; but I do not know what you have to do with it, and am rather curious to hear; for, to tell you the truth, I do not like you the better for wanting to stop me. If there were any gratitude in human nature, you would be grateful to Chandos Winslow, for he did all in his power to make your boy a good scholar and a good Christian: though, by the way, I suppose you care very little about his being either." The woman's eye flashed for an instant, with a very wild and peculiar gleam in it, which I think I mentioned before, and she answered vehemently, "You are wrong, Henry Lockwood, you are wrong; I am grateful to him for everything;" and then she burst into a flood of tears. Lockwood gazed at her with some emotion, and then put his hand kindly upon her arm, saying, "I did not mean to grieve you, my good woman; but still I do not understand you rightly: you say that you are grateful to this young gentleman; and yet you would prevent me from doing what I can to save him when his life is in danger for another man's act. You seem to know so much, that perhaps you know more; for your people are always prying about, and it is not unlikely that some of them saw the deed done. However, from what you said just now, and from the way in which you divined what I had been thinking about, I am sure you do not suspect Chandos Winslow, and that your suspicions take the same direction as my own; though mine are well nigh certainties, and yours can be but doubts."