"It was. And as to Mr. Castlemaine, you no more saw him go into the Friar's Keep than you saw me go. Last night, I was smoking my pipe and cleaning my gun--for I meant to shoot a few birds out at sea to-day--when who should come knocking at the Hutt door but Mr. Castlemaine. He'd been feeling out of sorts, he said, and thought a sail would do him good, and would like to go with me to-day--for it seems the whole parish had heard I was going. With all my heart, I answered; I'd be proud of his company. He sat down and took a pipe; smoking's contagious, you know: and we talked about this and that. When he left I saw him to the door, and watched him turn up the lane towards his house. It don't stand to reason he'd come down again." "He told us all this himself, Commodore." "Did he!--what, Mr. Castlemaine? Well, it's true. After he was gone, I got to my gun again, which I had laid aside when he entered. It struck twelve before I finished it. After that, I loaded it, took it to the door, and fired it off into the air. That was the shot you heard, landlord." "And the cry?" "Never was any cry to hear. 'Twas fancy. I made none, and I know I heard none." "What time was it when your gun went off?" "Past twelve; I don't rightly know how much. I went to bed and to sleep without looking at the clock. This morning word was brought me that Mr. Castlemaine had been fetched to Stilborough; and I took out Ben Little in the boat instead." But this explanation did not go for so much as it might have done. The Commodore was in the habit of telling the most incredible sea yarns; and faith, in that respect, was wanting in him. Moreover, the strong impression on John Bent's mind was, that it was a pistol-shot he had heard, not a gun. Above all, there remained the one broad fact of the disappearance: Anthony Castlemaine had been alive and well and amidst them the previous night, and to-day he was not. Altogether the commotion, the dread, and the sense of some mysterious evil increased: and lying upon many a heart, more or less, was a suspicion of the part played in it by Mr. Castlemaine. Dusk was approaching when a horseman rode past the Dolphin: Mr. Harry Castlemaine on his return from Newerton. Seeing what looked like an unusual bustle round the inn doors, he pulled up. Molly ran out. "What's agate?" asked Mr. Harry. "You seem to have got all the world and his wife here." "It's feared as it's murder, sir," returned simple Molly. "Murder!" "Well, sir, Mr. Anthony Castlemaine went into the Friar's Keep last night, and have never come out again. It's thought he was shot there. A dreadful cry was heard." "Shot! Who shot him?" "'Tain't known, sir. Some says it was Mr. Castlemaine that was in there along of him." Harry Castlemaine drew up his haughty head; a dark frown knitted his brow. But that she was a woman, ignorant and stupid, and evidently unconscious of all the word's might imply, he might have struck her as she stood.