“Lor’, sir! to think of your going off in the Cranstoun carriage, like that! It’ll make some folks I know that live in a great house outside the town, with a brass plate, and a boy in buttons to carry round the medicine-bottles in a basket, fit to burst themselves of envy. When you’re rested, sir, I’m just longing to know all about the Chase. I’ve always heard tell it’s such a fine place, grand enough for a royal dook. But to think of poor Sir Philip having such things said to him in court to-day, and all along of an impudent poacher fellow, who, I dare say, fully deserves his five years and more if the truth be known.” The doctor put down his knife and fork. “What do you mean, Mrs. Brooks?” he asked. “Tell me just what happened.” “Willingly, sir. If I might make so bold as to take a chair, being rather bad like, with rheumatism in the knees. It was this way, sir. My young sister-in-law, my brother William’s wife, you know, sir, she lives just across the way to the court-house, and William being in the force, she gets in to see the cases, and mostly drops in to tea with me afterward, to tell me about them; well, to-day she says there was a big, dark, young man, and well enough looking for his class of life, as was brought up on a charge of unlawfully wounding one of Sir Philip Cranstoun’s gamekeepers in a plantation near the Chase some few weeks ago. It appears it was about ten or a little before, and two of Sir Philip’s men, one of them with his arm all bandaged up, and a wound in his head, gave evidence as they were on the lookout for poachers, when they caught sight of this young man and another in a plantation near the Chase. Both were well-known poachers, and awful desperate men. The gamekeepers crept silently until they came upon them; but the poachers were very powerfully built and violent, and in the fight Sir Philip’s men were getting the worst of it, and the older ruffian had his knife out to murder the gamekeeper, as he knelt on his chest, pinning him to the ground, when Sir Philip himself, who was in the woods with his gun, hearing the scuffle, came up in the nick of time, and shot the poacher dead.” Dr. Netherbridge started from his chair. “Dead, do you say?” he asked. “Be quite sure. Do you really mean that Sir Philip Cranstoun, with his own hand, shot one of the poachers dead?” “With his own gun, sir, most certainly. The man’s been buried for weeks now. It all came out at the inquest, when Sir Philip and his gamekeeper attended to explain the accident. Didn’t you read of it in the papers?” “No; or if I did, I did not attach much importance to it _then_. It is different now, and horrible, most horrible! What was the dead man’s name?”