up in the pony-carriage, asking if his brother was there.  He looked at the skiff, and said it was the one his lordship had been in.  Mr. Elster said he supposed his brother was walking home, and he should drive slowly back and look out for him.  Later Mr. Elster returned:  he had several servants with him then and lanterns; they had come out to look for Lord Hartledon, but could not find him.  It was only just after they had gone away again that the Irish harvest-men came up and found the body.

This was the substance of the miller’s evidence; it was all he knew:  and the next witness called was the boy David Ripper, popularly styled in the neighbourhood young Rip, in contradistinction to his father, a day-labourer.  He was an urchin of ten or twelve, with a red, round face; quite ludicrous from its present expression of terrified consternation.  The coroner sharply inquired what he was frightened at; and the boy burst into a roar by way of answer.  He didn’t know nothing, and hadn’t seen nothing, and it wasn’t him that drowned his lordship; and he couldn’t tell more if they hanged him for it.

The miller interposed.  The boy was one of the idlest young vagabonds he had ever had the luck to be troubled with; and he thought it exceedingly likely he had been off that afternoon and not near the mill at all.  He had ordered him to take two sacks into Calne; but when he reached home he found the sacks untouched, lying where he had placed them outside.  Mr. Ripper had no doubt been playing truant on his own account.

“Where did you pass Tuesday afternoon during your master’s absence?” sternly demanded the coroner.  “Take your hands from your face and answer me, boy.”

David Ripper obeyed in the best manner he was capable of, considering his agitation.  “I dun know now where I was,” he said.  “I was about.”

“About where?”

Mr. Ripper apparently could not say where.  He thought he was “setting his bird-trap” in the stubble-field; and he see a partridge, and watched where it scudded to; but he wasn’t nigh the mill the whole time.

“Did you see anything of Lord Hartledon when he was in the skiff?”

“I never saw him,” he sobbed.  “I wasn’t nigh the mill at all, and never saw him nor the skiff.”

“What time did you get back to the mill?” asked the coroner.

He didn’t know what time it was; his master and missis had come home.

This was true, Mr. Floyd said.  They had been back some little time before Ripper showed himself.  The first intimation he received of that truant’s presence was when he drew his attention to the loose skiff.

“How came you to see the skiff?” sharply asked the coroner.

Ripper spoke up with trembling lips.  He was waiting outside after he came up, and afraid to go in lest his master should beat him for not taking the sacks, which went clean out of his mind, they did, and then he saw the little boat; upon which he called out and told his master.