Very gravely and silently the men who composed the coroner's jury walked down to Carnesford; scarce a word was spoken on the way, and a stranger, meeting them, might have supposed, not unnaturally, that they were returning from a funeral. The news had arrived before them, having been carried down at full speed by one of the few villagers who had been present. It had at first been received with absolute incredulity. The idea that Captain Mervyn should kill Margaret Carne seemed so wild a proposition that the first person to arrive with it was wholly disbelieved, and even the confirmation of those who followed him was also doubted. People, however, moved towards the foot of the hill to meet the jury, and a small crowd had collected by the time they had come down. The jury, upon being questioned, admitted that they had found Ronald Mervyn guilty, and when the fact was grasped, a sort of awed silence fell upon their hearers. "Why, whatever were you all thinking of?" one of the men said. "Why, you must have been downright mad. You find that Captain Mervyn was the murderer of his own cousin, and Mr. Carne your own landlord, too! I never heard tell of such a thing." The jury, indeed, were regarded almost as culprits; even to themselves now, their verdict seemed monstrous, though at the time the evidence had appeared so strong that they had felt themselves unable to resist the coroner's expressed opinion that, upon the evidence before them, they had no course open but to return a verdict of wilful murder against Ronald Mervyn. "You will hear about it presently, lads," Hiram Powlett said. "If you had been in our place, and had heard what we have heard, you would have said the same. I should have no more believed it myself this morning, if any one had told me that Captain Mervyn had murdered his cousin, than I should if they had told me that the mill stream was running the wrong way; but now I sees otherwise. There ain't one of us here as wouldn't have given another verdict if we could have done so, but having heard what we heard there weren't no other verdict to be given. I would have given a hundred pounds myself to have found any other way, but I couldn't go against my conscience; and besides, the coroner told us that if Captain Mervyn is innocent, he will have full opportunity of proving it at the trial. And now I must be off home, for I hear Mr. Carne sent down Ruth, as soon as she had given her evidence, in one of his carriages." Ruth had so far recovered that she was sitting on a chair by the fire when her father entered. She had heard nothing of what had taken place at the inquest beyond her own evidence, and she looked anxiously at her father as he slowly took off his coat and hat and hung them up, and came over to the fire beside her. "How are you feeling now, Ruth? You were looking sadly when you were in the court."