And we had an audience round us before the words were well spoken. To see the lock-up made fast when there was a prisoner within it, was always a coveted recreation in Piefinch Cut. Several individuals had come running up; not to speak of children from the gutters. Dovey stood gazing in front of his forge; Figg, who liked to be lounging about outside when he had no customers transacting delicate negotiations within, backed against his shop-window, and stared in concert with Dovey. Jones flourishing the formidable keys, crossed over to them. "How do he feel to-day?" asked Figg, nodding towards the lock-up. "He don't feel no worse appariently than he do other days," replied old Jones. "It be a regular odd thing, it be." "What be odd?" asked Dovey. "How the pison could ha' got into them there pills. Crew says he has never had no pison in his place o' no kind, herbs nor else." "And I would pledge my word that it is the truth," I put in. "Well, and so I think it is," said Dovey. "Last night George Reed was in here a-talking. He says he one day come across Abel Crew looking for herbs in the copse behind the Grange. Crew was picking and choosing: some herbs he'd leave alone, and some he dug up. Reed spied out a fine-looking plant, and called to him. Up comes Crew, trowel in hand, bends down to take a look, and then gives his head a shake. 'That won't do for me,' says he, 'that plant has poisonous properties,' says he; 'and I never meddles with them that has,' says he. George Reed told us that much in this here forge last night. Him and his wife have a'most had words about it." "Had words about what?" asked old Jones. "Why, about them pills. Reed tells her that if it is the pills what poisoned the young ones, she have made some mull o' the box Abel give her and got it changed. But he don't believe as 'twere the pills at all. And Hester Reed, she sticks to it that she never made no mull o' the box, and that the pills is the same." At this juncture, happening to turn my head, I saw Mrs. Dovey at the door at the back of the forge, her face screwed round the doorpost, listening: and there was a great fear on it. Seeing me looking at her, she disappeared like a shot, and quietly closed the door. A thought flashed across me. "That woman knows more about it than she will say! And it is frightening her. What can the mystery be?" The children were buried on the Sunday afternoon, all the parish flocking to the funeral; and the next morning Abel Crew was released. Whether old Jones had become doubtful as to the legality of what he had done, or whether he received a mandate from the coroner by the early post, no one knew. Certain it was, that before nine o'clock old Jones held the lock-up doors open, and Abel Crew walked out. It was thought that some one must have written privately to the coroner--which was more than likely. Old Jones was down in the mouth all day, as if he had had an official blowing-up.