The "somebody" turned out to be George Leonard. Harry Vale (who had strong suspicions) was right. When they dispersed after their target practising, one of them, George, went towards Briar Wood, his pistol loaded. The thick trees afforded a promising mark, he thought, and he carelessly let off the pistol at them. Whether he saw that he had shot a man was never known; he denied it out and out: didn't know one was there, he protested. A waggoner, passing homewards with his team, had seen him fire the pistol, and came forward to say so; or it might have been a mystery to the end. "Accidental Death," decided the jury at the inquest; but they recommended the supercilious young man (just as indifferent as his brothers) to take care what he fired at for the future. Mr. George did not take the rebuke kindly. For these sons had hard, bad natures; and were doing their best to bring down their father's grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. * * * * * But how strange it seemed altogether! The poor young gipsy-wife's subtle instinct that evil was near!--and that the shot should just have struck _him_ instead of spending itself harmlessly upon one of the hundreds of trees! Verily there are things in this world not to be grasped by our limited understandings. THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE. DISAPPEARANCE. I. According to Mrs. Todhetley's belief, some people are born to be unlucky. Not only individuals, but whole families. "I have noticed it times and again, Johnny, in going through life," she has said to me: "ill-luck in some way lies upon them, and upon all they do; they _cannot_ prosper, from their cradle to their grave." That there will be some compensating happiness for these people hereafter--for they do exist--is a belief we all like to cherish. I am now going to tell of people in rather humble life whom this ill-luck seemed to attend. _That_ might never have brought the family into notice, ups and downs being so common in the world: but two mysterious disappearances occurred in it, which caused them to be talked about; and those occurrences I must relate before coming to Dorothy's proper history. They took place before my time; in fact when Squire Todhetley was a young man, and it is from him that I repeat it. At this end of the village of Islip, going into it from Crabb, there stood on the right-hand side of the road a superior cottage residence, with lovely yellow roses intertwining themselves about its porch. Robert Grape and his wife lived in it, and were well enough to do. He was in the "post-horse duty," the Squire said--whatever that might mean; and she had money on her own account. The cottage was hers absolutely, and nearly one hundred pounds a-year income. The latter, however, was only an annuity, and would die with her.