It chanced that the same night this occurred, just about the time in fact that the unfortunate infants were taking down the pills under the superintendence of their mother and the blacksmith's wife, Abel Crew met with an accident; though it was curious enough that it should be so. In taking a pan of boiling herbs off the fire, he let one of the handles slip out of his fingers; it sent the pan down on that side, spilled a lot of the stuff, and scalded his left foot on the instep. Therefore he was about the last person to hear of the calamity; for his door was not open as usual the following morning, and no one knocked to tell him of it. Duffham was the first. Passing by on his morning rounds, the doctor heard the comments of the people, and it arrested him. It was so unusual a thing for Abel Crew not to be about, and for his door to be closed, that some of them had been arriving at a sensible conclusion--Abel Crew, knowing the mischief his pills had done, was shutting himself up within the house, unable to face his neighbours. "Rubbish!" said Duffham. And he strode up the garden-path, knocked at the door with his cane, and entered. Abel had dressed, but was lying down on the bed again to rest his lame foot. Duffham would have asked to look at it, but that he knew Abel Crew was as good at burns and scalds as he himself was. It had been doctored at once, and was now wrapped up in a handkerchief. "The fire is nearly out of it," said Abel, "but it must have rest; by to-night I shall be able to dress it with my healing-salve. I am much obliged to you for coming in, sir: though in truth I don't know how you could have heard of the accident." "Ah! news flies," said Duffham, evasively, knowing that he had not heard of the foot, or the neighbours either, and had come in for something altogether different. "What is this about the pills?" "About the pills?" repeated Abel Crew, who had got up out of respect, and was putting on his coat. "What pills, sir?" The doctor told him what had happened. Hester Reed had given one of his pills to each of her babies, and both had died of it. Abel Crew listened quietly; his face and his eyes fixed on Duffham. "The children cannot have died of the pills," said he, speaking as gently as you please. "Something else must have killed them." "According to Hester Reed's account, nothing can have done it but the pills," said Duffham. "The children had only taken their ordinary food throughout the day, and very little of that. George Reed came running to me in the night, but it was too late; one was dead before I got there. There could be no mistaking the children's symptoms--that both were poisoned." "This is very strange," exclaimed Abel, looking troubled. "By what kind of poison?" "Arsenic, I think. I----"