This was one of the main points which Geoffery wanted to establish. He now dismissed the butler, who was sobbing so violently, that he could scarcely answer the questions put to him. The coachman next entered; and it being Geoffery's object, with the views already stated, to alarm all the servants for their own safety, he looked extremely austere, and, aware that the individual he had now to deal with was not overburdened with wisdom, began thus: "So I find, James, you don't pretend to deny that you brought arsenic from Arden, and the defence which I understand you pretend to set up, is, that you did so by your master's orders, for the purpose of poisoning rats. Now, this is quite too hackneyed an excuse; as to the orders you _say_ you received, I fancy you have no proof that you received any." "I told the groom that went with me, and the boy at the apothecary's, that my master sent me." "You told them! What sort of proof is that? You don't suppose that your own word will be taken for yourself, whatever it may against yourself! This will never do. I know something of the law, and unless there is stronger evidence against some one else, you will certainly be hung for the murder. The only thing in your favour is, that you would get nothing by Sir Willoughby's death." "If they _chooses_ to hang an innocent man," replied James, very philosophically, "I can't help it, I dun as I was bid." "It's a very awkward thing having no witness in your favour but a dead man. Are you sure it was not Sir Alfred who gave you the orders? for if so, he is there, you know, to say so, which might save you." "No, it was Sir Willoughby himself." After a little more cross-questioning, James retired to the servants' hall, where the effect of Geoffery's interference, was just what he intended it should be: the utmost excitement existed. The one general argument in their own favour, cunningly suggested to each by Geoffery, that they would get nothing by the death of poor Sir Willoughby, was constantly recurred to, while every time this was said, the remembrance naturally suggested itself of who it was that would gain everything by the melancholy event; not that any of the household yet dared in word, or even perhaps in thought, to connect accusation or suspicion with the mental recognition of the abstract fact. The strangeness, too, of attempting to rinse the glass, and the strangeness of taking away the paper of arsenic were named, while other still stranger circumstances were from time to time, as they transpired, cautiously whispered to a chosen few, by Geoffery's man, Davison, but no one ventured to draw inferences. As the servants, however, of neighbouring families came in to make inquiries respecting the sudden demise of Sir Willoughby, already beginning to be generally known, many very extraordinary rumours soon got abroad. CHAPTER XXIV.