The path she was pursuing would have led her out to the main road, which she must cross to reach the Brands', some half a mile further west than the point at which the gate gave access to the blind road through the wood. But there was a little spot of marshy ground before reaching the road; she remembered that her shoes were thin and that wet feet were disagreeable even in June, and as a consequence she struck into a cross path which intersected the blind road and would bring her out at the gate. As a secondary consequence, she followed that road and came out a minute after at the gate, to open it without observing what lay beyond, and to start back with a scream of affright as she saw the body of Carlton Brand lying on the green sward without, his face still set in that terrible contortion, and the rigidity of death alike in limb and feature. The young girl had seen but little of death, and not yet learned to regard it rather as a deliverance than otherwise; and in any shape it frightened her. How natural, then, that she should regard it with peculiar horror when she came upon it alone, by a wood-side, and in the person of an acquaintance equally admired and respected! But what must have been her feelings when, the moment after, and before she had commanded herself sufficiently to do more than utter that single scream of terror, she saw a bundle lying near the apparently dead man, saw blood staining one of his hands and the grass beside him, and recognized the bundle as the same she had seen, not half an hour before, under the arm of Richard Compton! If that unfortunate young man, on discovering the supposed extent of his mishap, had remembered the threat against the lawyer made but a little while before to Kitty, how did that threat spring into her mind on seeing the blood and recognizing the bundle! Murder, beyond a doubt, and Dick Compton the murderer! The two had met, accidentally, had quarrelled, had clenched, and in that clench her lover had forgotten all except his jealousy and fear of the lawyer, and had killed him outright! Oh, here was trouble, indeed, to which that of a few moments previous had been but the merest shadow! Dick would be arrested, tried, imprisoned, perhaps hung; and _she_ would be obliged to give the fatal evidence that must seal his doom! Terrible indeed--most terrible!--the thought culminating in such mental suffering that the poor girl scarcely knew whether she was treading upon earth or air, as she took one more look upon the motionless form, the blood, and the accusing bundle that lay beside--then turned her back with a shudder upon all, crossed the road and hastened over the fields beyond, by a bye-path that would lead her to the home of the murdered man--her errand now, and her reason for haste, how different from what it had been when walking towards, the same destination but a few moments before! CHAPTER IV.