"No time has been lost as yet, my lord," replied Manners: "I myself have been to the place where the gipsies were last seen; but they are there no more, and, to all appearance, must have either decamped in the night or early this morning. But it appears certain, from the evidence of Mr. De Vaux's servant, who was with me, that some footprints which we traced on the ground, in different parts of the common, were from my poor friend's boot; and in the same track are those of another person, who was apparently with him during the night." "But whither did they lead?" exclaimed the peer, whose agitation was becoming dreadful. "Speak out, sir, for God's sake! You call him your poor friend: you have discovered more. Whither did the footsteps lead? I can bear all." "They led, my lord," replied Manners, "to a high bank, overhanging a part of the road, about a mile or more to the west of Morley House, near a point of wooded land which causes the river to take a singular bend in its course." Lord Dewry shook in every limb; but, by a strong effort, he uttered, "Go on, sir; go on: let me hear the worst." "Thank God, my lord, I have little more to inflict upon your lordship," replied Manners. "At that bank the steps ended; but--" He paused, and the peer eagerly demanded, "But what--what found you more?" "It must be told," thought Manners. "We found, my lord," he added, aloud, "a good deal of blood spilled upon the sand." The peer groaned bitterly. "My poor boy! my poor boy!" he cried; but for some minutes he said no more. While Manners had been in the act of telling his tale, the conflict which had taken place in the bosom of Lord Dewry can better be conceived than described. Every moment produced a change of sensation; every word a new and different apprehension. Now he fancied his son made acquainted with his guilt; now feared that the very means he had taken to conceal it might have made the gipsy to wreak his vengeance on his unoffending child. That Pharold was capable of committing any or every crime was a conviction which had been brought about in the mind of the peer by one of those curious processes in the human heart whereby great guilt seeks to conceal its blackness from even its own eyes, by representing others in colours as dark as it feels that it itself deserves; and while at one moment he suspected that Pharold might have obtained information of the trap laid for him by the gamekeeper, and to avenge himself might have revealed his whole history to Edward de Vaux, at another he believed that the destruction of his son might have been the means which the gipsies had determined upon, in order to punish himself for his designs against them.