CHAPTER V.

THE TALL GENTLEMAN IN THE LANE.


Apart from the horror of the affair, it was altogether attended with so
much mystery that that of itself would have kept the excitement alive.
What could have taken Rachel Frost near the pond at all? Allowing that
she had chosen that lonely road for her way home--which appeared
unlikely in the extreme--she must still have gone out of it to approach
the pond, must have walked partly across a field to gain it. Had her
path led close by it, it would have been a different matter: it might
have been supposed (unlikely still, though) that she had missed her
footing and fallen in. But unpleasant rumours were beginning to
circulate in the crowd. It was whispered that sounds of a contest, the
voices being those of a man and a woman, had been heard in that
direction at the time of the accident, or about the time; and these
rumours reached the ear of Mr. Verner.

For the family to think of bed, in the present state of affairs, or the
crowd to think of dispersing, would have been in the highest degree
improbable. Mr. Verner set himself to get some sort of solution first.
One told one tale; one, another: one asserted something else; another,
the exact opposite. Mr. Verner--and in saying Mr. Verner, we must
include all--was fairly puzzled. A notion had sprung up that Dinah Roy,
the bailiffs wife, could tell something about it if she would. Certain
it was, that she had stood amid the crowd, cowering and trembling,