The Argosy — page 98: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

84 Anne Hereford. THe ARGOS. am. 1, 1863. been cross and crabbed all day. Coming home, Heneage dropped us; After that, we met Smith—as he can tell you, if you are going to his house. He stopped me about that nght-of-common business, and began dis- ‘cussing what would be our better mode of proceeding against the fel- lows. Philip King, whom it did not interest, said he should go on, and Smith and I sat down on the bench outside the beershop, and called for a pint of cider. MHalf-an-hour we may have sat there, and whether to go forward, or to lag behind, I am unable to say. then I started for home through the wood, which cuts off the corner ‘Philip King having gone forward, did you say?” interrupted the surgeon. é “Yes. Iwas nearly through the wood, when I heard a slight move- ment near me, and then a gun was fired. A terrible scream—the scream of a man, Lowe—succeeded in an opposite direction. I pushed through the trees, and saw Philip King. He had leaped up with the shot, and was then falling to the ground. I went to his succour, and asked who had done it. ‘George Heneage,’ was his answer. He had seen him raise his gun, take aim, and fire upon him.” Crouching down there on the matting, trembling though I was, an impulse prompted me to interrupt : to say that Mr. Edwin Barley’s words went beyond the truth. All that Philp King had said was, that he saw George Heneage, saw him stand there. But fear was more powerful than impulse, and I remained silent. How could I dare contradict Mr. Edwin Barley? “Tt must have been an accident,” said Mr. Lowe. ‘‘ Heneage must have aimed at a bird.” ‘‘'There’s no doubt that it was deliberate murder!” replied Mr. Barley. “My ward affirmed it to me with his dying lips. They were his own words. I expressed a doubt, as you are doing. ‘It was Heneage,’ he said; ‘I tell it you with my dying lips.’ A bad man !—a villain!” Mr. Barley emphatically added. ‘ Another day or two, and I should -have kicked him out of my house; I waited but a decent pretext.” “Tf he is that, why did you have him in it?” asked the surgeon. “¢ Because it is but recently that my eyes have been opened to him. This poor fellow,” pointing to the dead, ‘“‘ was the one to lift their scales in the first instance. Pity the other is not the one to be lying 123 here Sounds of hysterical emotion were heard on the stairs: they came from Mrs. Edwin Barley. It appeared that she had been sitting on the lowest step all this while, her face bent on her knees, and must have heard what passed. Mr. Barley, as if wishing to offer an apology, said she had just looked on Philip King’s face, and it had frightened her. Mr. Lowe wished to persuade her to retire from the scene, but she The sur- geon measured something in a teaspoon into a wine-glass, filled it up would not, and there she sat on, growing calm by degrees. GO) mn C a ~~ JOO <S (GO)