“Wait till I get ye home,” said he significantly.  “I’ll drive the ghosts out of ye!”

Mr. Verner had seated himself in his study, with a view of investigating systematically the circumstances attending the affair, so far as they were known.  At present all seemed involved in a Babel of confusion, even the open details.

“Those able to tell anything of it shall come before me, one by one,” he observed; “we may get at something then.”

The only stranger present was Mr. Bitterworth, an old and intimate friend of Mr. Verner.  He was a man of good property, and resided a little beyond Verner’s Pride.  Others—­plenty of them—­had been eager to assist in what they called the investigation, but Mr. Verner had declined.  The public investigation would come soon enough, he observed, and that must satisfy them.  Mrs. Verner saw no reason why she should be absent, and she took her seat.  Her sons were there.  The news had reached John out-of-doors, and he had hastened home full of consternation.  Dr. West also remained by request, and the Frosts, father and son, had pressed in.  Mr. Verner could not deny them.

“To begin at the beginning,” observed Mr. Verner, “it appears that Rachel left this house between six and seven.  Did she mention to anybody where she was going?”

“I believe she did to Nancy, sir,” replied Mrs. Tynn, who had been allowed to remain.

“Then call Nancy in,” said Mr. Verner.

Nancy came, but she could not say much:  only that, in going up the front stairs to carry some linen into Mrs. Verner’s room, she had met Rachel, dressed to go out.  Rachel had said, in passing her, that she was about to visit her father.

“And she came?” observed Mr. Verner, turning to Matthew Frost, as Nancy was dismissed.

“She came, sir,” replied the old man, who was having an incessant battle with himself for calmness; for it was not there, in the presence of others, that he would willingly indulge his grief.  “I saw that she had been fretting.  Her eyes were as red as ferrets’; and I taxed her with it.  She was for turning it off at first, but I pressed for the cause, and she then said she had been scolded by her mistress.”

“By me!” exclaimed Mrs. Verner, lifting her head in surprise.  “I had not scolded her.”

But as she spoke she caught the eye of her son John, and she remembered the little scene of the afternoon.

“I recollect now,” she resumed.  “I spoke a word of reproof to Rachel, and she burst into a violent flood of tears, and ran away from me.  It surprised me much.  What I said was not sufficient to call forth one tear, let alone a passionate burst of them.”

“What was it about?” asked Mr. Verner.

“I expect John can give a better explanation of it than I,” replied Mrs. Verner, after a pause.  “I went out of the room for a minute or two, and when I returned, Rachel was talking angrily at John.  I could not make out distinctly about what.  John had begun to tease her about Luke Roy, I believe, and she did not like it.”