Outside was a throng of gazers, kept off partly by the rural constabulary, and partly by some of the yeomanry of the district. These he hated for their idle curiosity, their prying into other people's business; and could he have had his will, would have swept the ground clear of them at one stroke of his arm. Standing on a rising knoll at some little distance, he recognised Squire Lupton and James Woodruff, with his daughter Fanny, gazing over the ruins, and watching with deep interest the progress of the workmen, who were busily employed in recovering from the hot ruins as much of the property on the premises as might have escaped with only partial or no damage. At that sight-- “each passion dimm'd his face, Thrice chang'd with pale ire, envy, and despair.” He would have got out, but he dared not. He felt as though the people would murder him, and cast him into the mouldering heaps of his own house. Unrecognised in his carriage he was secure; and having drawn up pretty closely to the spot where the last-named little party stood, he gazed with an intensity of look almost indescribable upon the operations going on amongst the ruins. It was plain that some strange idea had come into his mind; it seemed written in his very features that something might be found there which he would have no man know: a thing for his eyes only, and not to be seen by such men as those. “But it was a wooden box,” thought he again, “and it must be burnt. It could not escape--it is not likely--not possible. No, no; not possible.” And yet, as he comforted himself thus, that possibility was still standing on his brow as plainly as did the mark on Cain's:--the mark that told ineffaceably before heaven and earth his guilt, and warned every man he met to shun him. Still the workmen worked, and he still gazed. At last they carried out on a hand-barrow a heap of broken furniture, of partly destroyed boxes, and pictures shrivelled like a parched scroll. Somebody standing by now observed to his neighbour that the face of that man in the carriage was frightful. “'Tis it!--'t is it!” exclaimed the Doctor, fiercely, madly, with hysteric passion, unconscious of what he said and did. At the same time he dashed his fist with the force of a stone through the glass of the window; and having rapidly opened the door, rushed distractedly past all impediments up to the men in question. This sudden apparition,--for scarcely less even in the midst of daylight did it seem,--so completely astonished and alarmed the people that all those along the course he took fled backwards in fear; while those beyond the scene of action as earnestly pressed forwards to ascertain what was amiss.