The country-side swarmed to the rescue, and the family were saved, with one exception, the master.

He did not appear.

Everybody was frantic over this loss, and two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in ransacking the burning house seeking that valuable personage.

But after a while he was found--what was left of him--which was his corpse.

It was in a copse three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a dozen places.
Who had done this?
Suspicion fell upon a humble family in the neighborhood who had been lately treated with peculiar harshness by the baron; and from these people the suspicion easily extended itself to their relatives and familiars.