Going downstairs as he was, he hastily lighted the kitchen fire and put a kettle of water on. Then, dressing himself, he ran out for Mr. Duffham. The doctor came in soon after George Reed had got back again. Duffham was accustomed to scenes, and he entered on one now. Mrs. Reed, in a state of distress, had put the babies in blankets and brought them down to the kitchen fire; the three elder children, aroused by the cries, had come down too, and were standing about in their night-clothes, crying with fright. One of the babies was dead--Hetty. She had just expired in her father's arms. The other was dying. "What on earth have you been giving to these children?" exclaimed Duffham, after taking a good look at the two. "Oh, sir, what is it, please?" sobbed Mrs. Reed, in her terror. "Convulsions?" "Convulsions--no," said the doctor, in a fume. "It is something else, as I believe--poison." At which she set up a shriek that might have been heard out of doors. "Well, Hetty was dead, I say;" and Duffham could not do anything to save the other. It died whilst he stood there. Duffham repeated his conjecture as to poison; and Mrs. Reed, all topsy-turvy though she was, three-parts bereft of her senses, resented the implication almost angrily. "Poison!" cried she. "How can you think of such a thing, sir!" "I tell you that to the best of my belief these children have both died from some irritant poison," asserted Duffham, coolly imperative. "I ask what you have been giving them?" "They have not been well this three or four days past," replied she, wandering from the point; not evasively, but in her mind's bewilderment. "It must have been their teeth, sir; I thought they were cutting 'em with fever." "Did you give them any physic?" "Yes, sir. A pill apiece when I put 'em to bed." "Ah!" said Mr. Duffham. "What pill was it?" "One of Abel Crew's." This answer surprised him. Allowing that his suspicion of poison was correct, he assumed that these pills must have contained it; and he had never had cause to suppose that Abel Crew's pills were otherwise than innocent. Mrs. Reed, her voice broken by sobs, explained further in answer to his questions, telling him how she had procured these pills from Abel Crew some time before, and had given one of the said pills to each of the babies. Duffham stood against the dresser, taking it all in with a solemn face, his cane held up to his chin. "Let me see this box of pills, Mrs. Reed." She went upstairs to get it. A tidy woman in her ways, she had put the box in its place again on the top of the press. Duffham took off the lid, and examined the pills. "Do you happen to have a bit of sealing-wax in the house, Reed?" he asked presently.