第181章

"I did not want convincing--I knew it without. Everybody else knew it."

"To be sure," equably returned Lawyer Ball. "Did Captain Thorn /see/ it done--did he tell you that?"

"He had got his hat, and was away down the wood some little distance, when he heard voices in dispute in the cottage, and recognized one of them to be that of my father. The shot followed close upon it, and he guessed some mischief had been done, though he did not suspect its extent."

"Thorn told you this--when?"

"The same night--much later."

"How came you to see him?"

Afy hesitated; but she was sternly told to answer the question.

"A boy came up to the cottage and called me out, and said a strange gentleman wanted to see me in the wood, and had given him sixpence to come for me. I went, and found Captain Thorn. He asked me what the commotion was about, and I told him Richard Hare had killed my father.

He said, that now I spoke of him, he could recognize Richard Hare's as having been the other voice in the dispute."

"What boy was that--the one who came for you?"

"It was Mother Whiteman's little son."

"And Captain Thorn then gave you this version of the tragedy?"

"It was the right version," resentfully spoke Afy.

"How do you know that?"

"Oh! because I'm sure it was. Who else would kill him but Richard Hare? It is a scandalous shame, your wanting to put it upon Thorn!"

"Look at the prisoner, Sir Francis Levison. Is it he whom you knew as Thorn?"

"Yes; but that does not make him guilty of the murder."

"Of course it does not," complacently assented Lawyer Ball. "How long did you remain with Captain Thorn in London--upon that little visit, you know?"

Afy started like anybody moonstruck.

"When you quitted this place, after the tragedy, it was to join Captain Thorn in London. How long, I ask, did you remain with him?"

Entirely a random shaft, this. But Richard had totally denied to Lawyer Ball the popular assumption that Afy had been with him.

"Who says I was with him? Who says I went after him?" flashed Afy, with scarlet cheeks.

"I do," replied Lawyer Ball, taking notes of her confusion. "Come, it's over and done with--it's of no use to deny it now. We all go upon visits to friends sometimes."

"I never heard anything so bold!" cried Afy. "Where will you tell me I went next?"

"You are upon your oath, woman!" again interposed Justice Hare, and a trembling, as of agitation, might be detected in his voice, in spite of its ringing severity. "Were you with the prisoner Levison, or were you with Richard Hare?"

"I with Richard Hare!" cried Afy, agitated in her turn, and shaking like an aspen-leaf, partly with discomfiture, partly with unknown dread. "How dare that cruel falsehood be brought up again, to my face?

I never saw Richard Hare after the night of the murder. I swear it. I swear that I never saw him since. Visit /him/! I'd sooner visit Calcraft, the hangman."

There was truth in the words--in the tone. The chairman let fall the hand which had been raised to his face, holding on his eye-glasses; and a sort of self-condemning fear arose, confusing his brain. His son, proved innocent of one part, /might/ be proved innocent of the other; and then--how would his own harsh conduct show out! West Lynne, in its charity, the justice in his, had cast more odium to Richard, with regard to his after conduct touching this girl, than it had on the score of the murder.

"Come," said Lawyer Ball, in a coaxing tone, "let us be pleasant. Of course you were not with Richard Hare--West Lynne is always ill-natured--you were on a visit to Captain Thorn, as--as any other young lady might be?"

Afy hung her head, cowed down to abject meekness.

"Answer the question," came forth the chairman's voice again. "/Were/ you with Thorn?"

"Yes," though the answer was feeble enough.

Mr. Ball coughed an insinuating cough.

"Did you remain with him--say two or three years?"

"Not three."

"A little over two, perhaps?"

"There was no harm in it," shrieked Afy, with a catching sob of temper. "If I chose to live in London, and he chose to make a morning call upon me, now and then, as an old friend, what's that to anybody?

Where was the harm, I ask?"

"Certainly--where was the harm? /I/ am not insinuating any," returned Lawyer Ball, with a wink of the eye furthest from the witness and the bench. "And, during the time that--that he was making these little morning calls upon you, did you know him to be Levison?"

"Yes. I knew him to be Captain Levison then."

"Did he ever tell you why he had assumed the name of Thorn?"

"Only for a whim, he said. The day he spoke to me in the pastrycook's shop at Swainson, something came over him, in the spur of the moment, not to give his right name, so he gave the first that came into his head. He never thought to retain it, or that other people would hear of him by it."

"I dare say not," laconically spoke Lawyer Ball. "Well, Miss Afy, I believe that is all for the present. I want Ebenezer James in again," he whispered to an officer of the justice-room, as the witness retired.

Ebenezer James reappeared and took Afy's place.

"You informed their worships, just now, that you had met Thorn in London, some eighteen months subsequent to the murder," began Lawyer Ball, launching another of his shafts. "This must have been during the period of Afy Hallijohn's sojourn with him. Did you also see /her/?"

Mr. Ebenezer opened his eyes. He knew nothing of the evidence just given by Afy, and wondered how on earth it had come out--that she had been with Thorn at all. He had never betrayed it.

"Afy?" stammered he.

"Yes, Afy," sharply returned the lawyer. "Their worships know that when she took that trip of hers from West Lynne it was to join Thorn not Richard Hare--though the latter has borne the credit of it. I ask you, did you see her? for she was then still connected with him."

"Well--yes, I did," replied Mr. Ebenezer, his own scruples removed, but wondering still how it had been discovered, unless Afy had--as he had prophesied she would--let out in her "tantrums." "In fact, it was Afy whom I first saw."

"State the circumstances."