As these things and discussions went on, Mr. Woodburn began to manifest considerable uneasiness, and he suddenly said one day, as the matter was spoken of:—“You will see, they will say at last that it was I who did it.” “Oh, God forbid!” exclaimed both Mrs. Woodburn and Ann. “What are you saying? For heaven’s sake do not utter so horrid, so ridiculous an idea.” “Well, you will see,” continued Mr. Woodburn, “that they will lay the crime on me; and I would have you prepare for it. I was the last man who passed that way before Mr. Drury that evening; and not long before him; no mortal can be found to have witnessed how Mr. Drury came to his death; and as the public mind, following the doctor, insists on a murder—well then, I am the man who stands in closest proximity to the event.” Mr. Woodburn might have added the unfortunate words which he used in the hayfield in the hearing of at least half a dozen men and women; but he would not add to the horror of the idea he had started to his wife and children. Their alarm was great, though they treated any imputation on such a man as their father and husband as the most impossible and ridiculous of suppositions. George said thoughtfully, but yet with a tone of melancholy, “Your character, dear father, is enough to protect you from a dozen of such charges. It will never be made; if it were, it can never be proved; because it is clear no mortal saw the transaction, and it is still more certain that _you_ never did it.” “Of course not,” said Mr. Woodburn; “I am not such a fool, if I were even such a villain.” But not many weeks elapsed, before the worst fears of Mr. Woodburn were realised. The “Castleborough Chronicle,” the conservative journal of the county, and in which the influence of the Bullockshed, Tenterhook, and Swagsides class, and that of a much higher and nobler, the influence of the best aristocracy of the county, prevailed, had a startling article. It observed that the continued absence of any evidence of the perpetration of the crime of murder at Wink’s Ferry, after much and vigorous inquiry, led them to revert to that mysterious fact, by which a man of much eminence and activity in the county had somehow lost his life. An event of so much importance to the security of society, demanded that it should not be suffered to drift away into oblivion, without the turning of every stone which might possibly elicit the hidden and gloomy truth: and however painful it might be to prosecute the inquiries on the subject into quarters otherwise most respectable, and, therefore, unlikely, impartial justice, and the dearest interests of the public, made it imperative to endeavour to fathom the mystery, even though in the process some most estimable minds might be intensely pained.