JOHN.

'_P.S._ I shall register the letter to make sure. Telegraph if

you would like me to come.'

Well, we telegraphed, though mother doesn't hold with such things,

looking on it as flying in the face of Providence and what's

natural. But we got it all in, with the address, for sixpence, and

Harry was as pleased as Punch to think of seeing his brother again.

But mother said she doubted if it would bring a blessing. And on the

Sunday morning John came.

He was a very agreeable, gentlemanly man, with such manners as you

don't see in Littlington--no, nor in Polegate neither,--and very

changed from the boy with the red cheeks as used to come past our

house on his way to school when he was very little.

Harry met him at the station and brought him home, and when he come

in he kissed me like a brother, and mother too, and he said--

'The best good of trouble, ma'am, is to show you who your friends

really are.'

'Ah,' says mother, 'I doubt if all the detectives in London, asking

your pardon, Master John, can set Master Harry up in his own again.

But he's got a pair of hands, and so has my Polly, and he might have

chosen worse, though I says it.'

Now, after dinner, when I'd cleared away, nothing would serve but I

must go out with the two of them. So we went out, and walked up on

to the Downs for quietness' sake, and it was a warm day and soft,

though November, and we leaned against a grey gate and talked it all

over.

Then says Master John, 'Look here, Polly, we aren't to have any

secrets from you. There's no doubt they were married, but doesn't it

seem to you rather strange that my poor old father should have been

taken off so suddenly after the wedding?'

'Yes,' I said, 'but the doctors seemed to understand all about it.'

Then he said something about the doctors that it was just as well

they weren't there to hear, and he went on--

'Of course I thought at first they weren't married, so I set about

finding out what they did when they came to London; and I haven't

found out what my father did, but I did pounce on a bit of news, and

that's that she wasn't with him the whole day. They came to Charing

Cross by the same train, but he wasn't with her when she went to get

that arsenic from the chemist's.'

'What!' says I, 'arsenic?'

'Yes,' says John, 'don't you get excited, my dear. I found that out

by a piece of luck once as doesn't come to a man every day of the

week. A woman answering to her description went into a chemist's

shop, and the assistant gave the arsenic, a shilling's-worth it was,

to kill rats with.'

'And God above only knows why they put such bits of fools into a

shop to sell sixpenny-worths of death over the counter,' says Harry.

'Now the question is: Was this woman answering to her description

really Mrs. Blake or not?'

'It was Mrs. Blake,' says I, very short and sharp.

'How do you know?' says John, shorter and sharper.

Then I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out what I had found in

Mrs. Blake's corner cupboard, and John took it in his hand and

looked at it, and whistled long and low. It was a little white

packet, and had been opened and the label torn across, but you could

read what was on it plain enough--'Arsenic--Poison,' and the name of

the chemist in London.

John's face was red as fire, like some men's is when they're going

in fighting, and my Harry's as white as milk, as some other men's is

at such times. But as for me, I fell a-crying to think that any

woman could be so wicked, and him such a good master and so kind to

her, and she having the sole care of him, helpless in her hands as

the new-born babe.

And Harry, he patted me on the back, and told me to cheer up and not

to cry, and to be a good girl; and presently, my handkerchief being

wet through, I stopped, and then John, he said--

'We'll bring it home to her yet, Harry, my boy. I'll get an order to

have poor old father exhumed, and the doctors shall tell us how much

of the arsenic that cursed old hag gave him.'

IV I don't know what you have to do to get an order to open up a

grave and look at the poor dead person after it is once put away,

but, whatever it was, John knew and did it.

We didn't tell any one except our dear old parson who buried the old

man; and he listened to all we had to say, and shook his head and

said, 'I think you are wrong--I think you are wrong,' but that was

only natural, him not liking to see his good work disturbed. But he

said he would be there.

Now, no one was told of it, and yet it seemed as if every one for

miles round knew more than we did about it.

Afore the day come, old Mrs. Jezebel up at the farm, she met me one

day, and she says, 'You're a pretty puss, aren't you, howking up my

poor dear deceased husband's remains before they're hardly cold?

Much good you'll do yourself. You'll end in the workhouse, my fine

miss, and I shall come to see you as a lady visitor when you're

dying.'

I tried to get past her, but she wouldn't let me. 'I wish you joy o'

that Harry, cursed young brute!' says she. 'It serves him right, it

does, to marry a girl out of the gutter!'

And with that--I couldn't help it--I fetched her a smack on the side

of the face with the flat of my hand as hard as I could, and bolted

off, her after me, and me being young and she stout she couldn't

keep up with me. Gutter, indeed! and my father a respectable

labourer, and known far and wide.

There were several strangers come the day the coffin was got up. It

was a dreadful thing to me to see them digging, not to make a grave

to be filled up, but to empty one. And there were a lot of people

there I didn't know; and the parson, and another parson, seemingly a

friend of his, and every one as could get near looking on.

They got the coffin up, and they took it to the room at the Star, at

Alfreston, where inquests are held, and the doctors were there, and

we were all shut out. And Harry and John and I stood on the stairs.

But parson, being a friend of the doctor's, he was let in, him and

his friend. And we heard voices and the squeak of the screws as they

was drawn out; and we heard the coffin lid being laid down, and then

there was a hush, and some one spoke up very sharp inside, and we

couldn't hear what he said for the noise and confusion that came

from every one speaking at once, and nineteen to the dozen it

seemed.

'What is it?' says Harry, trembling like a leaf: 'O my God! what is

it? If they don't open the door afore long, by God, I shall burst it

open! He was murdered, he was! And if they wait much longer, that

woman will have time to get away.'

As he spoke, the door opened and parson came out, and his friend

with him.

'These are the young men,' says our parson.

'Well, then,' says parson number two, 'it's a good thing I heard of

this, and came down--out of mere curiosity, I am ashamed to say--for

the man who is buried there is not the man whom I united in holy

matrimony to Martha Blake two months ago last Tuesday.'

We didn't understand.

'But the poison?' says Harry.

'She may have poisoned him,' said our parson, 'though I don't think

it. But from what my friend here, the rector of St Mary Woolnoth,

tells me, it is quite certain she never married him.'

'Then she's no right to anything?' said Harry.

'But what about the will?' says I. But no one harkened to me.

And then Harry says, 'If she poisoned him she will be off by now.

Parson, will you come with me to keep my hands from violence, and my

tongue from evil-speaking and slandering? for I must go home and see

if that woman is there yet.'

And parson said he would; and it ended in us, all five of us, going

up together, the new parson walking by me and talking to me like

somebody out of the Bible, as it might be one of the disciples.

I got to know him well afterwards, and he was the best man that ever

trod shoe-leather.

We all went up together to Charleston Farm, and in through the back,

without knocking, and so to the parlour door. We knew she was

sitting in the parlour, because the red firelight fell out through

the window, and made a bright patch that we see before we see the

house itself properly; and we went, as I say, quietly in through the

back; and in the kitchen I said, 'Oh, let me tell her, for what she

said to me.'

And I was sorry the minute I'd said it, when I see the way that

clergyman from London looked at me; and we all went up to the

parlour door, and Harry opened it as was his right.

There was Mrs. Blake sitting in front of the fire. She had got on

her widow's mourning, very smart and complete, with black crape, and

her white cap; and she'd got the front of her dress folded back very

neat on her lap, and was toasting her legs, in her black-and-red

checked petticoat, and her feet in cashmere house-boots, very warm

and cosy, on the brass fender; and she had got port wine and sherry

wine in the two decanters that was never out of the glass-fronted

chiffonier when master was alive; and there was something else in a

black bottle; and opposite her, in the best arm-chair that old

master had sat in to the last, was that lawyer, Sigglesfield from

Lewes. And when we all came in, one after another, rather slow, and

bringing the cold air with us, they sat in their chairs as if they

had been struck, and looked at us.

Harry and John was in front, as was right; and in the dusk they

could hardly see who was behind.

'And what do you want, young men?' says Mrs. Blake, standing up in

her crape, and her white cap, and looking very handsome, Harry said

afterwards, though, for my part, I never could see it; and, as she

stood up, she caught sight of the clergyman from London, and she

shrank back into her chair and covered her face with her hands; and

the clergyman stepped into the room, none of us having the least

idea of what he was going to say, and said he--

'That's the woman that I married on the 7th; and that's the man I

married her to!' said he, pointing to Sigglesfield, who seemed to

turn twice as small, and his ferret eyes no better than button-hole

slits.

'That!' said our parson; 'why, that's Mr. Sigglesfield, the

solicitor from Lewes.'

'Then the lady opposite is Mrs. Sigglesfield, that's all,' said the

parson from London.

'What I want to know,' says Harry, 'is--is this my house or hers?

It's plain she wasn't my father's wife. But yet he left it to her in

the will.'

'Slowly, old boy!' said John; 'gently does it. How could he have

left anything in a will to his wife when he hadn't got any wife?

Why, that fellow there---'

But here Mrs. Blake got on her feet, and I must say for the woman,

if she hadn't got anything else she had got pluck.

'The game's up!' she says. 'It was well played, too, though I says

it. And you, you old fool!' she says to the parson, 'you have often

drunk tea with me, and gone away thinking how well-mannered I was,

and what a nice woman Mrs. Blake was, and how well she knew her

place, after you had chatted over half your parish with me. I know

you are the curiousest man in it, and as you and me is old friends,

I don't mind owning up just to please you. It'll save a lot of time

and a lot of money.'

'It's my duty to warn you,' said John, 'that anything you say may be

used against you.'

'Used against a fiddlestick end!' said Mrs. Blake. 'I married Robert

Sigglesfield in the name of William Alderton, and he sitting

trembling there, like a shrimp half boiled! He got ready the kind of

will we wanted instead of the one the old man meant, and gave it to

the old man to sign, and he signed it right enough.'

'And what about that arsenic,' says I,--'that arsenic I found in

your corner cupboard?'

'Oh, it was you took it, was it? You little silly, my neck's too

handsome for me to do anything to put a rope round it. Do you

suppose I've kept my complexion to my age with nothing but cold

water, you little cat?'

'And the other will,' says Harry, 'that my father meant to sign?'

'I'll get you that,' says Mrs. Blake. 'It's no use bearing malice

now all's said and done.'

And she goes upstairs to get it, and, if you'll believe me, we were

fools enough to let her go; and we waited like lambs for her to come

back, which being a woman with her wits about her, and no fool, she

naturally never did; and by the time we had woke up to our seven

senses, she was far enough away, and we never saw her again. We

didn't try too much. But we had the law of that Sigglesfield, and it

was fourteen years' penal.

And the will was never found--I expect Mrs. Blake had burnt it,--so

the farm came to John, and what else there was to Harry, according

to the terms of the will the old man had made when his wife was

alive, afore John had joined the force. And Harry and John was that

pleased to be together again that they couldn't make up their minds

to part; so they farm the place together to this day.

And if Harry has prospered, and John too, it's no more than they

deserve, and a blessing on brotherly love, as mother says. And if my

dear children are the finest anywhere on the South Downs, that's by

the blessing of God too, I suppose, and it doesn't become me to say

so.