"But I wish you to talk to me. I ask you to talk to me. You may see that I speak to you confidentially--do you so speak to me. There is no one else I would thus talk with about it, save you." "Madam, it's just this--not but what I feel the honour you do me, and thank you for it; and goodness knows what honour I hold and have always held you in, Miss Castlemaine--But it's this, ma'am: your opinion lies one way and mine the other: and while I would not insist to you that Mr. Castlemaine was guilty, I yet can't let myself say he was not." "I am as fully persuaded he was not as that those stars are above us," she said. But John made no reply. "Mr. Anthony was made away with, madam. I----" "No, no," she interrupted with a shiver. "I don't accuse Mr. Castlemaine of having done it," proceeded John. "What I say, and hold to, is this, ma'am: that Mr. Castlemaine must know something of what became of him. But he does not avow it; he keeps silence: and it is that silence that strengthens the suspicions against him. I saw him come in here that night just as surely as I see you here now, Miss Castlemaine. It's true I did not see him so clearly go into the Friar's Keep; these mouldering walls, sticking up here and there a foot or two from the earth, dodge one's eyesight: still I saw the shade of him, like, go in: and in less than a minute my attention was called off Mr. Castlemaine by Mr. Anthony's own movements. I saw him go into the Keep: he made for it straight." "But I say that the person you saw may not have been Mr. Castlemaine," she urged again, after having quietly heard him to the end. "What other man is there in Greylands, ma'am, of the height and bearing of Mr. Castlemaine--one with the bold, free, upright walk and the gentleman's dress?" returned the landlord. "Only Mr. Harry: and Mr. Harry is too young and slender to be mistaken for his father even in the moonlight. Mr. Harry happened to be away that night at Newerton." "I think you are cruelly, persistently obstinate. Forgive me, Mr. Bent; I do not wish or intend to hurt your feelings," she added in a gentle, even kind tone. "It seems to me that you must have some animus against Mr. Castlemaine." "The poor young gentleman was living under my roof, madam. I went forth with him that night, halted with him opposite this very gate, and watched him in. It has sat on my mind always since that I am in a manner accountable for him--that it lies with me to find out what became of him." "I can understand the feeling and appreciate it," she answered quickly. "In itself it is a good and right feeling; but I think that it's very intensity tends to mislead you, and to cause this very animosity against Mr. Castlemaine. The person you saw come in here may have been a stranger: you have had no confirmation of any kind that it was Mr. Castlemaine: and the eyesight at night is so deceptive."