chel had utterly repudiated the wish. Luke it
was not. And who else was there?

The suspicions of Mr. Verner veered, almost against his will, towards
those of his own household. Not to Lionel; he honestly believed Lionel
to be too high-principled: but towards his step-sons. He had no
particular cause to suspect either of them, unless the testimony of Mrs.
Duff's son about the tall gentleman could furnish it; and it may be said
that his suspicion strayed to them only from the total absence of any
other quarter to fix it upon. Of the two, he could rather fix upon John,
than Frederick. No scandal, touching Frederick, had ever reached his
ears: plenty of it touching John. In fact, Mr. Verner was rather glad to
help in shipping John off to some faraway place, for he considered him
no credit to Verner's Pride, or benefit to the neighbourhood. Venial
sins sat lightly on the conscience of John Massingbird.

But this was no venial sin, no case of passing scandal; and Mr. Verner
declared to that gentleman that if he found him guilty, he would discard
him from Verner's Pride without a shilling of help. John Massingbird
protested, in the strongest terms, that he was innocent as Mr. Verner
himself.

A trifling addition was destined to be brought to the suspicion already
directed by Mr. Verner towards Verner's Pride. On the night of the
inquest Mr. Verner had his dinner served in his study--the wing of a
fowl, of which he ate about a fourth part. Mrs. Tynn attended on him: he
liked her to do so when he was worse than usual. He was used to her, and
he would talk to her when he would not to others. He spoke about what
had happened, saying that he felt as if it would shorten his life. He
would give anything, he added, half in self-soliloquy, to have the
point cleared up of who it was young Duff had seen in the lane. Mrs.
Tynn answered this, lowering her voice.

"It was one of our young gentlemen, sir; there's, no doubt of it. Dolly
saw one of them come in."

"Dolly did!" echoed Mr. Verner.

Mrs. Tynn proceeded to explain. Dolly, the dairymaid at Verner's Pride,
was ill-conducted enough (as Mrs. Tynn would tell her, for the fact did
not give that ruling matron pleasure) to have a sweetheart. Worse still,
Dolly was in the habit of stealing out to meet him when he left work,
which was at eight o'clock. On the evening of the accident, Dolly,
abandoning her dairy, and braving the wrath of Mrs. Tynn, should she be
discovered, stole out