every one speaking at once, and nineteen to the dozen it
seemed.

'What is it?' says Harry, trembling like a leaf: 'O my God! what is
it? If they don't open the door afore long, by God, I shall burst it
open! He was murdered, he was! And if they wait much longer, that
woman will have time to get away.'

As he spoke, the door opened and parson came out, and his friend
with him.

'These are the young men,' says our parson.

'Well, then,' says parson number two, 'it's a good thing I heard of
this, and came down--out of mere curiosity, I am ashamed to say--for
the man who is buried there is not the man whom I united in holy
matrimony to Martha Blake two months ago last Tuesday.'

We didn't understand.

'But the poison?' says Harry.

'She may have poisoned him,' said our parson, 'though I don't think
it. But from what my friend here, the rector of St Mary Woolnoth,
tells me, it is quite certain she never married him.'

'Then she's no right to anything?' said Harry.

'But what about the will?' says I. But no one harkened to me.

And then Harry says, 'If she poisoned him she will be off by now.
Parson, will you come with me to keep my hands from violence, and my
tongue from evil-speaking and slandering? for I must go home and see
if that woman is there yet.'

And parson said he would; and it ended in us, all five of us, going
up together, the new parson walking by me and talking to me like
somebody out of the Bible, as it might be one of the disciples.

I got to know him well afterwards, and he was the best man that ever
trod shoe-leather.

We all went up together to Charleston Farm, and in through the back,
without knocking, and so to the parlour door. We knew she was
sitting in the parlour, because the red firelight fell out through
the window, and made a bright patch that we see before we see the
house itself properly; and we went, as I say, quietly in through the
back; and in the kitchen I said, 'Oh, let me tell her, for what she
said to me.'

And I was sorry the minute I'd said it, when I see the way that
clergyman from London looked at me; and we all went up to the
parlour door, and Harry opened it as was his right.

There was Mrs. Blake sitting in front of the fire. She had got on
her widow's mourning, very smart and complete, with black crape, and
her white cap; and she'd got the front of her dress folded back very
neat on her lap, and was toasting her legs, in her black-and-red
checked petticoat,