"I believe you will kill the child between you," Mrs. Powlett said, testily, as she entered with the dinner. "Any one can see with half an eye that she ain't fit to be going before a court and giving evidence after the shock as she 'as had. She ought to have been left quiet. If you had half the feeling of a man in you, Hiram Powlett, you wouldn't have let them do it. If I had been there I should have got up and said: 'Your worship can see for yourself as my daughter is more fit to be in bed than to be worrited and questioned here. She ain't got nothing to tell you more than you knows yourself. She just came in and found her mistress dead, and that's all she knows about it.'" "And what verdict did you find, father?" Ruth asked, as soon as her mother had finished. [Illustration: "'_What verdict did you find, father?' Ruth asked._"] "Verdict! What verdict should they find," Mrs. Powlett said, angrily, "but that they just knew nothing at all about it?" "That wasn't the verdict, Hesba," Hiram Powlett said, as he seated himself at the table; "I wish to God it had been. There was things came out at the trial as altogether altered the case. We found as one had been quarrelling with Miss Carne, and threatening what he would do to her. We found as something belonging to him had been found close at hand, where it could only have been put somewhere about the time of the murder. We found as the person couldn't tell us where he had been at the time; and though it were sorely against us to do it, and seemed the most unnatural thing in the world, we had to find a verdict of wilful murder against Captain Mervyn." Ruth had risen from her seat as her father was speaking; her face had grown whiter and whiter as he went on, and one hand had gone to her heart, while the other clutched at the back of the chair. As he finished she gave a sudden start, and burst into a scream of hysterical laughter, so startling Hiram Powlett and his wife, neither of whom was looking at her, that the former upset his chair as he started to his feet, while the latter dropped the plate she was in the act of setting before him. For some minutes the wild laughter rang through the house. Hesba had at once taken the girl in her arms, and seated her in the chair again, and after trying for a minute or two vainly to soothe her, turned to Hiram. "Don't stand staring there, Hiram; run for the doctor. Look what you have done, with your stories about your courts and your verdicts. You have just scared her out of her mind." Fortunately as Hiram ran up into the village street he saw Dr. Arrowsmith--who had waited at The Hold, talking over the matter to some of his neighbours--driving down the hill, and at once fetched him in to Ruth.