“And yet,” added Fanny in a mingled feeling of jest and earnest, “there seems to be small chance of the prophecy coming true.” Before Colin could reply, a noise without was heard of the tread of numerous feet, mingled with the sound of carriage wheels as they slowly advanced down the road, cracking and crushing the dry gravel. Then came a hurried rap at the door. Fanny flew to it, but it was already opened. A little crowd had gathered outside, and every face looked solemn and anxious. Some peeped down the passage, and others at the contents of a gig which had stopped before the house. She looked out. The shafts were snapped asunder; the harness broken; the horse, led by a farming man, was covered with foam and dust and mud. He bled at the mouth, and looked fierce and angry, though subdued. In the gig itself lay the body of her master the lawyer, insensible, and supported on the knee of a second farming man. Fanny ran into the house again, terrified at the sight, and summoned Colin, the lawyer's clerk, and an under servant girl, to his assistance. Shortly afterwards the body was carefully lifted out and carried up stairs. Before this, a man had been despatched to obtain the speedy assistance of the proprietor of the lunatic asylum at Nabbfield. What an opportunity for Dr. Rowel was presented here to stifle Fanny's evidence for ever! CHAPTER V. _Relates the triumph of the Doctor, and the manner in which he achieved it.--Lawyer Skinwell's death-bed, and what happened there._ The evening was warm and fine; and the gentle slope, on the top of which Dr. Rowel's establishment stood, was coloured with the setting light of the sun; as, with the glass-doors, which opened from his drawing-room upon the lawn, thrown wide back to admit the scarcely stirring air,--the doctor himself sat near it and alone, in an attitude of thought, meditating mischief. A dash of vermilion-coloured light shot athwart the lower part of his person, while the upper portion was covered with that kind of illuminated shadow, that clear obscure, which, to the delicate perception of a painter, constitutes one of Nature's greatest beauties. But the thoughts and reflections in which the doctor indulged were deeply at variance with those which the scene before him, and the character of the hour, were calculated to suggest. It was not with him--“how much do I now enjoy?” but the morose reflection--“how long shall I enjoy it?” His present happiness was swallowed up in the anticipation of possible coming evil. “What matters it,” thought he, “when tomorrow, perhaps, that treacherous villain may make everything known? Nay, how do I know he has not done so already? True, I have had him watched. I know everything he has done, and something that he has said; and this very day again he is gone to York. To-morrow I may wake to be arrested,--to have my house searched, and Woodruff set at liberty.” As the doctor then mused, the door opened, and a stranger was ushered in.