"He wrote me a letter six weeks ago, and he wrote one to the prefessor; and he said he was getting on like a house on fire," doggedly asserted the professor's wife. "Stay, stay, I pray you," interposed Miss Jupp. "There must be some misunderstanding. You cannot be speaking of the same man." "We are!" raved both the ladies, losing temper. "It is Robert Hunter, the engineer, who met Mary Anne Thornycroft at my house; and the two--as I suspected--fell in love with each other, which made me very mad." "And came down to see her at Coastdown, and Susan Hunter was to have come with him, and didn't. Of course we are speaking of the same." "And I say that he come back from that visit safe and sound, and was in London till April, when he went abroad," screamed Mrs. Macpherson. "He dined here with us the Sunday afore he was off; we had a lovely piece o' the belly o salmon, and a quarter o' lamb and spring cabbage, and rhubub tart and custards, and a bottle of champagne, that we might drink success to his journey. Very down-hearted he seemed, I suppose at the thoughts of going away; and the next day he started. There! Ask the professor, ma'am, and contradict it if you can." "I won't contradict it," said Mrs. Copp; "I might set on and swear if I did, like my son Sam. You'll persuade me next there's nothing real in the world. Anna Chester--that is, Anna Thornycroft--do you tell what you know. Perhaps they'll hear you." "Oh, I'll hear the young lady," said Mrs. Macpherson fanning herself violently; "but nobody can't persuade me that black's white." Anna quietly related facts, so far as her knowledge extended: Robert Hunter had come to Coastdown, had paid his visit to the Red Court Farm, and on the very night he was to have left for London he was shot as he stood at the edge of the cliffs, fell over, and was not found until the morning--dead! Her calm manner, impressive in its truth, her minute relation of particulars, her unqualified assertion that it was Robert Hunter, and could have been no one else, staggered Mrs. Macpherson. "And he was shot down dead, you say?" cried that lady, dropping the fan, and opening her mouth very wide. "He must have died at the moment he was shot. It was not discovered"--here her voice faltered a little--"who shot him, and the jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown." "Was there a inquest?" demanded the astonished Mrs. Macpherson, "on Robert Hunter?" "Certainly there was. He was buried subsequently in Coastdown churchyard. His grave lies in the east corner of it, near Mrs. Thornycroft's." "Now you have not told all the truth, Anna," burst forth Mrs. Copp, who had been restraining herself with difficulty. "You are always shuffling out of that part of the story when you can. Why don't you say that you and Miss Thornycroft saw him murdered? Tell it as you had to tell it before the coroner." "It is true," acknowledged Anna.