an opportunity to examine this humble
interior unsuspected and unobserved. So I prevailed upon the old woman
to exchange places with me; she taking up her abode in the woods for the
night and I her old stool on the hearthstone. She was the more willing
to do this from the promise I gave her to watch out for Lizzie. That I
would don her own Sunday suit and personate her in her own home she
evidently did not suspect. Had not wit enough, I suppose. At the present
moment she is back in her old place."

I nodded my thanks for this explanation, but was not deterred from
pressing the point I was anxious to have elucidated.

"If," I went on to urge, "you took advantage of your disguise to act as
assistant in the burial which took place last night, you are in a much
better situation than myself to decide the question we are at present
considering. Was it because of any secret knowledge thus gained you
declare so positively that it was not a human being you helped lower in
its grave?"

"Partially. Having some skill in these disguises, especially where my
own infirmities can have full play, as in the case of this strong but
half-bent woman, I had no reason to think my own identity was suspected,
much less discovered. Therefore I could trust to what I saw and heard as
being just what Mother Jane herself would be allowed to see or hear
under the same circumstances. If, therefore, these young people and this
old crone had been, as you seem to think they are, in league for murder,
Lucetta would hardly have greeted me as she did when she came down to
meet me in the kitchen."

"And how was that? What did she say?"

"She said: 'Ah, Mother Jane, we have a piece of work for you. You are
strong, are you not?'"

"Humph!"

"And then she commiserated me a bit and gave me food which, upon my
word, I found hard to eat, though I had saved my appetite for the
occasion. Before she left me she bade me sit in the inglenook till she
wanted me, adding in Hannah's ear as she passed her: 'There is no use
trying to explain anything to her. Show her when the time comes what
there is to do and trust to her short memory to forget it before she
leaves the house. She could not understand my brother's propensity or
our shame in pandering to it. So attempt nothing, Hannah. Only keep the
money in her view.'"

"So, and that gave you no idea?"

"It gave me the idea I have imparted to you, or, rather, added to the
idea which had been instilled in me by