The Argosy — page 179: what you’re looking at

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

162 The Mysteries of Heron Dyke. that he had in all probability been murdered ; he then sped back to his stable yard, and saddled a horse to ride forth in search of a doctor. Fetch the nearest doctor you can find, had been Miss Winter’s gasping order to him, and he hastened to obey it. By his own orders the groom rode forth on another horse to summon the chief-constable from his office at Nullington. The frightened maids had gathered round Miss Winter, when Dorothy Stone appeared in the doorway, tying with trembling fingers her cap-strings. The bells and the commotion had startled her, but she did not know what had happened. At sight of the patient furrowed face and the dim blue eyes, just now full of anxious wonder, a great pity took the heart of Miss Winter, and the tears filled her own eyes as she went up to the old woman and led her away. No need for her to know the terrible news just yet. Mrs. Toynbee next appeared upon the scene: she had waited to dress. Her first act was to order the white-faced servants away to their duties ; her second to speak with John Tilney. It was by her directions that he and his two men—for the other man had come up now—carried the ill-fated young fellow into a room on the ground floor. Then, with much tact and gentleness, Mrs. Toynbee succeeded In persuading Aaron, who seemed half-stupefied with grief and horror, to allow himself to be got into his own apartments by Tilney. Nothing more could be done till the arrival of the doctor and the police. Dr. Spreckley and Mr. Chief-Constable Wade reached Heron Dyke together, driving over in a gig from the Rose and Crown. The first thing they did was to look at the dead. That Hubert Stone had been murdered a very slight examination sufficed to prove. He had been stabbed through the heart with a stiletto or some other sharp instrument. The disordered state of his attire, as well as the condition of the trimly-kept gravel walk, showed that he had not met his fate without a struggle: some sharp encounter must have taken place. | But what had brought him there? Why had he come back to - Heron Dyke in the night-time ?—or perhaps it might have been at the first glimmer of dawn. These were the questions that ran around. Miss Winter’s thoughts, which she kept to herself, ran in somewhat a different groove. Might he not have come back by train the previous day, she asked herself, and intended to call on her in the evening, and been afraid or ashamed to do so, and so lingered about the grounds until it was too late? Too late also to get admittance to his old lodgings at the lodge? and so he had paced about during the night hours, and had disturbed the thief or thieves in the act of rifling the bureau? Miss Winter’s mind lost itself in troubled conjectures, _ Examination showed that a hole had been cut with a diamond in the window of the room where the jewels lay, the window been opened, and the shutters forced from their hinges. The bureau Eomicbooks.com