“Perhaps it was not true; perhaps Elizabeth had been mistaken or had only said it to torment her.” She rose. She flung herself upon her knees, there by the stone, and prayed, this first time for many years—she prayed with all her soul. “Oh, God, if Thou art, spare him his life and me this agony.” In her dreadful pangs of grief her faith was thus re-born, and, as all human beings must in their hour of mortal agony, Beatrice realised her dependence on the Unseen. She rose, and weak with emotion sank back on to the stone. The people were streaming past her now, talking excitedly. Somebody came up to her and stood over her. Oh, Heaven, it was Geoffrey! “Is it you?” she gasped. “Elizabeth said that you were murdered.” “No, no. It was not I; it is that poor fellow Johnson, the auctioneer. Jones shot him. I was standing next him. I suppose your sister thought that I fell. He was not unlike me, poor fellow.” Beatrice looked at him, went red, went white, then burst into a flood of tears. A strange pang seized upon his heart. It thrilled through him, shaking him to the core. Why was this woman so deeply moved? Could it be——? Nonsense; he stifled the thought before it was born. “Don’t cry,” Geoffrey said, “the people will see you, Beatrice” (for the first time he called her by her christian name); “pray do not cry. It distresses me. You are upset, and no wonder. That fellow Beecham Bones ought to be hanged, and I told him so. It is his work, though he never meant it to go so far. He’s frightened enough now, I can tell you.” Beatrice controlled herself with an effort. “What happened,” he said, “I will tell you as we walk along. No, don’t go up to the farm. He is not a pleasant sight, poor fellow. When I got up there, Beecham Bones was spouting away to the mob—his long hair flying about his back—exciting them to resist laws made by brutal thieving landlords, and all that kind of gibberish; telling them that they would be supported by a great party in Parliament, &c., &c. The people, however, took it all good-naturedly enough. They had a beautiful effigy of your father swinging on a pole, with a placard on his breast, on which was written, ‘The robber of the widow and the orphan,’ and they were singing Welsh songs. Only I saw Jones, who was more than half drunk, cursing and swearing in Welsh and English. When the auctioneer began to sell, Jones went into the house and Bones went with him. After enough had been sold to pay the debt, and while the mob was still laughing and shouting, suddenly the back door of the house opened and out rushed Jones, now quite drunk, a gun in his hand and Bones hanging on to his coat-tails. I was talking to the auctioneer at the moment, and my belief is that the brute thought that I was Johnson. At any rate, before anything could be done he lifted the gun and fired, at me, as I think. The charge, however, passed my head and hit poor Johnson full in the face, killing him dead. That is all the story.”