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"Oh, are you going to take us out to sea?" gasped Amy. "Please don't! I'll do anything if you will release us. See, I have money," and she brought out a little gold purse from a skirt pocket. At the sight of the gleaming metal the crone's eyes glittered. "Don't be afraid," she said. "You won't be harmed. All we want to know is " A knock interrupted her.
"The lot of earth is woe," answered Aram calmly, yet shrinking back from the crone's touch; "judge we charitably, and act we kindly to each other. There this money is not much, but it will light your hearth and heap your table without toil, for some days at least!" "Thank your honour: an' what think you I'll do with the money?" "What?"
And at last he was out of the Hathercleugh grounds, and close to the Till, and in the end he took to a thin belt of trees that ran down the side of the Till, close by the place where Crone's body had been found, and almost opposite the very spot, on the other bank, where I had come across Phillips lying dead; and suddenly I saw what he was after.
I say!" he went on, laying a hand on my arm, "you're dead certain that you've never mentioned to a soul but myself anything about that affair of yours and Crone's you know what I mean?" "Absolutely certain, Sir Gilbert!" I answered. "There's no living being knows but yourself." "That's all right," he said, and I could see he was relieved.
I wanted to drop in at Crone's before I went again to the office: what had just happened, had made me resolved that Crone and I should speak out; and if he wouldn't, then I would. And presently I was hurrying away to his place, and as I turned into the back lane that led to it I ran up against Sergeant Chisholm. "Here's another fine to-do, Mr. Moneylaws!" said he.
A loud cry of "Right! right!" from the old crone's lips expressed the gray-haired Biamite's pleasure in this worthy daughter of her race. Then she again gazed at the wine in the vessel, and this time she did so silently, as if spellbound by the mirror on its bottom. At last, raising her aged head, she said in a tone of the most sincere compassion: "Poor child!
Wrinkled like an old crone's face, and antlered with dead branches that rose above the foliage of their summits, they were nevertheless still green though yellow had invaded the leaves of other trees.
The old woman's reply was brief and expressive. It consisted in extending her open and hollow palm, into which the priest counted the three hundred pieces of gold with as much expedition as was compatible with the frequent interruptions necessitated by the crone's depositing each successive handful in a leather pouch; and the scrutiny, divided between jealousy and affection, which she bestowed on each individual coin.
And when I came to reflect on the circumstances of Crone's murder, I remember that not so long since, happening to be out along the riverside, I chanced across Sir Gilbert Carstairs using a very late type of ice-ax as a walking-stick as he well could do, and might have picked up in his hall as some men'll pick up a golf-stick to go walking with, and I've done that myself, hundred of times.
It was to Chisholm that he put his first questions casually, as if they were very ordinary ones, and yet with an atmosphere of meaning behind them that excited curiosity. "You made a very exhaustive search of the neighbourhood of the spot where Crone's body was found, didn't you?" he inquired. "A thorough search," answered Chisholm. "You found the exact spot where the man had been struck down?"
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