The bullet I took from my father's body most certainly came from this pistol.' "'Can 'e say, can 'e say then, who done it, master ?' asked Jacob, a man very sparing of speech, but ready at a beck to jump at constable and miller's men, if only law was with him.

'Can 'e give a clear account, and let me chuck 'un in the river ?' "'No, Jacob, I can do nothing of the kind,' your father answered; while the rural man came up and faced things, not being afraid of a fight half so much as he was of an accident; by reason of his own mother having been blown up by a gunpowder start at Dartford, yet came down all right, miss, and had him three months afterward, according to his own confession; nevertheless, he came up now as if he had always been upright, in the world, and he said, 'My lord, can you explain all this ?' "Your father looked at him with one of his strange gazes, as if he were measuring the man while trying his own inward doing of his own mind.
Proud as your father was, as proud as ever can be without cruelty, it is my firm belief, Miss Erema, going on a woman's judgment, that if the man's eyes had come up to my master's sense of what was virtuous, my master would have up and told him the depth and contents of his mind and heart, although totally gone beyond him.
"But Jobbins looked back at my lord with a grin, and his little eyes, hard to put up with.

'Have you nothing to say, my lord?
Then I am afeared I must ask you just to come along of me.' And my master went with him, miss, as quiet as a lamb; which Jobbins said, and even Jacob fancied, was a conscience sign of guilt.
"Now after I have told you all this, Miss Erema, you know very nearly as much as I do.

To tell how the grief was broken to your mother, and what her state of mind was, and how she sat up on the pillows and cried, while things went on from bad to worse, and a verdict of 'willful murder' was brought against your father by the crowner's men, and you come headlong, without so much as the birds in the ivy to chirp about you, right into the thick of the worst of it.

I do assure you, Miss Erema, when I look at your bright eyes and clear figure, the Lord in heaven, who has made many cripples, must have looked down special to have brought you as you are.