And it is more than words can do to tell the state of mind in which Elizabeth Murray lived for days after; her daughter gone--perhaps for ever--perhaps, for who could trust any man? to sorrow and shame; her son lying, rolling his head from side to side, sometimes violent, and requiring restraint which it was so difficult to know how to use; sometimes lying like a log, in a stupor which nothing could break. She lived on, nevertheless, saying little even to her companion Dick, and went down to the market on Saturday as usual with a brave front, and sold her butter and bore her burden. She stood in the market as she always stood, and asked everything about the murder, and made her criticisms and observations. "It would be some tramp," she said, looking them all in the face. For the young squire, even if it had been in him to strike a sudden blow and kill his adversary, he could never have beaten and crushed him savagely as had been done. She said all this without a change of countenance, for she was a brave woman, and felt that she must not save herself a single detail. She went to Miss Prentice even, and there talked it over again, though the chief end of her visit was to say that she had sent Lily to a cousin's far south, and did not fear but what the change would put her all right. Everybody accepted her explanations with straightforward simplicity as they seemed to be given, for nothing had directed suspicion to her; and nobody supposed it possible that she could have anything to do with it. The old vicar, indeed, looking very old and very anxious, hovered about Elizabeth's place, wistfully looking at her, talking to her, trying to lead her to the subject of her son. But she had never been much disposed to talk commonly of Abel, at least for many years, and fortunately she remembered this, and would not be drawn into conversation about him now. The old vicar was very unhappy. He had repented his disclosure when he saw the unhappy young man rush out disgraced and stung to the heart, and though it never occurred to him nor to any one to connect Murray's disappearance, for which there was such good reason, with the horrible event which had occurred next morning, yet the idea that the unfortunate young fellow had felt the exposure so deeply, gave the old man a grievous pang. Even in the midst of the excitement caused by the murder, he had gone daily to Landale to inquire if any news of their visitor had reached them. What could have happened to him? It might be suicide, for anything they could tell, and in that case, Mr Weston felt he too would be a murderer. "But his mother knows nothing about it," he said to himself, with a sigh of relief. Was it possible that anything of that dreadful kind could have happened and the mother not know?