The words were interrupted. The door had opened, and John Massingbird
appeared, marshalling in Dinah Roy. Dinah looked fit to die, with her
ashy face and her trembling frame.

"Why, what is the matter?" exclaimed Mr. Verner.

The woman burst into tears.

"Oh, sir, I don't know nothing of it; I protest I don't," she uttered.
"I declare that I never set eyes on Rachel Frost this blessed night."

"But you were near the spot at the time?"

"Oh, bad luck to me, I was!" she answered, wringing her hands. "But I
know no more how she got into the water nor a child unborn."

"Where's the necessity for being put out about it, my good woman?" spoke
up Mr. Bitterworth. "If you know nothing, you can't tell it. But you
must state what you do know--why you were there, what startled you, and
such like. Perhaps--if she were to have a chair?" he suggested to Mr.
Verner in a whisper. "She looks too shaky to stand."

"Ay," acquiesced Mr. Verner. "Somebody bring forward a chair. Sit down,
Mrs. Roy."

Mrs. Roy obeyed. One of those harmless, well-meaning, timid women, who
seem not to possess ten ideas of their own, and are content to submit to
others, she had often been seen in a shaky state from very trifling
causes. But she had never been seen like this. The perspiration was
pouring off her pinched face, and her blue check apron was incessantly