om he truly
loved, clearly seeing there was no hope whatever that she would ever
favour him, was eager to get away from Deerham--anywhere, so that he
might forget her. John Massingbird knew this; he liked Luke, and he
thought Luke might prove useful to him in the land to which he was
emigrating, so he proposed to him to join in the scheme. Luke warmly
embraced it. Old Roy, whom they were obliged to take into confidence,
was won over to it. He furnished Luke with the needful funds, believing
he should be repaid four-fold; for John Massingbird had contrived to
imbue him with the firm conviction that gold was to be picked up for the
stooping.

Only three days before the tragic event occurred to Rachel, Luke had
been despatched to London by John Massingbird to put things in a train
of preparation for the voyage. Luke said nothing abroad of his going,
and the village only knew he was away by missing him.

"What's gone of Luke?" many asked of his father.

"Oh, he's off to London on some spree; he can tell ye about it when he
gets back," was Roy's answer.

When he got back! John's departure was intended for the day following
that one when you saw him packing his clothes, but the untimely end of
Rachel had induced him to postpone it. Or, rather, the command of Mr.
Verner--a command which John could not conveniently disobey had he
wished. He had won over Mr. Verner to promise him a substantial sum, to
"set him up," as he phrased it, in Australia; and that sum was not yet
handed to him.

CHAPTER VIII.

ROBIN'S VOW.

The revelation at the inquest had affected Mr. Verner in no measured
degree, greatly increasing, for the time, his bodily ailments. He gave
orders to be denied to all callers; he could not bear the comments that
would be made. An angry, feverish desire to find out who had played the
traitor grew strong within him. Innocent, pretty, child-like Rachel! who
was it that had set himself, in his wickedness, deliberately to destroy
her? Mr. Verner now deemed it more than likely that she had been the
author of her own death. It was of course impossible to tell: but he
dwelt on that part of the tragedy less than on the other. The one injury
was uncertain; the other was a fact.

What rendered it all the more obscure was the absence of any previous
grounds of suspicion. Rachel had never been observed to be on terms of
intimacy with any one. Luke Roy had been anxious to court her, as
Verner's Pride knew; but Ra