"Because it as good as sets forth a lie," vehemently answered Robin Frost. "She never put herself into the water. Bad as things had turned out with her, poor dear, she never did that. Mr. Lionel, I ask you, sir, was she likely to do it?" "I should have deemed it very unlikely," replied Lionel. "Until to-day," he added to his own thoughts. "No, she never did! Was it the work of one to go and buy herself aprons, and tape, and cotton for sewing, who was on her way to fling herself into a pond, I'd ask the crowner?" he continued, his voice rising almost to a shriek in his emotion. "Them aprons be a proof that _she_ didn't take her own life. Why didn't they bring it in Wilful Murder, and have the place scoured out to find him?" "The verdict will make no difference to the finding him, Robin," returned Lionel Verner. "I dun know that, sir. When a charge of wilful murder's out in a place, again' some one of the folks in it, the rest be all on the edge to find him; but 'Found drownded' is another thing. Have you any suspicion again' anybody, sir?" He put the question sharply and abruptly, and Lionel Verner looked full in his face as he answered, "No, Robin." "Well, good-afternoon, sir." He turned away without another word. Lionel gazed after him with true sympathy. "He will never recover this blow," was Lionel Verner's mental comment. But for this unfortunate occurrence, John Massingbird would have already departed from Verner's Pride. The great bane of the two Massingbirds was, that they had been brought up to be idle men. A sum of money had become theirs when Frederick came of age--which sum you will call large or small, as it may please you. It would be as a drop of water to the millionaire; it would be as a countless fortune to one in the depths of poverty: we estimate things by comparison. The sum was five thousand pounds each--Mrs. Massingbird, by her second marriage with Mr. Verner, having forfeited all right in it. With this sum the young Massingbirds appeared to think that they could live as gentlemen, and need not seek to add to it.