There were murmurs of hushed and awe-struck adhesion to these remarks, but not a dissentient voice in all the company, and in a frame of mind which would now undoubtedly be called "sensational," and not in a broken line of march, as heretofore, but almost shoulder to shoulder, we entered the Home Spinney. CHAPTER VII. WHAT WAS IN THE COVERED CART. If this true narrative of mine should chance to find its channel of publication in a hebdomadal periodical, and the end of the last chapter coincide with the end of the week, I am afraid I shall have unduly aroused the expectation of my readers, and kept them upon tenter-hooks during that period upon false pretences, or rather what may seem to be so. They will doubtless have promised themselves some ghastly spectacle (and I give them my honour that if they will only have patience they shall have it) to be presented in the very next page or two. It may disappoint them temporarily, to hear that though we searched the coppice, tree by tree, and left not one heap of leaves unstirred by our feet, that we found nothing, nothing. And yet I will venture to say, that if we had come upon that sight which all were so prepared for, the stiffened limbs of murdered Sir Massingberd, with his cruel face set for ever in death, and his hard eyes scowling up at the sky, it would scarcely have filled us with greater awe. It would have been a terrible sight, doubtless, but with every minute the terror would have faded, until at last it might have even melted into pity. He could at least have hurt no man more, being dead. But now that he was only Lost--still Lost--we looked at one another with dumb surprise, and over our own shoulders with misgivings. He was not above ground in all Fairburn Chase, that was certain; nor under water, for the dragging-parties had discovered no more than we. Any idea of suicide was quite out of the question; Sir Massingberd Heath was the last man to leave life before he was summoned, even if he really felt, as he averred, that there was no sort of risk in doing so. Wicked men have a tolerably high opinion of this world, notwithstanding their low views of the people that inhabit it; and the French philosopher who put an end to his not invaluable existence upon the ground that he had had enough of everything, was an exceptional case.