Mr. Osbaldistone was examined. He kept interrupting himself perpetually
to express his surprise at the fact of so steady and well-conducted a man
as Dixon being guilty of so heinous a crime, and was willing enough to
testify to the excellent character which he had borne during all the many
years he had been in his (Mr. Osbaldistone's) service; but he appeared to
be quite convinced by the evidence previously given of the prisoner's
guilt in the matter, and strengthened the case against him materially by
stating the circumstance of the old man's dogged unwillingness to have
the slightest interference by cultivation with that particular piece of
ground.
Here Ellinor shuddered. Before her, in that Roman bed-chamber, rose the
fatal oblong she knew by heart--a little green moss or lichen, and thinly-
growing blades of grass scarcely covering the caked and undisturbed soil
under the old tree. Oh, that she had been in England when the surveyors
of the railway between Ashcombe and Hamley had altered their line; she
would have entreated, implored, compelled her trustees not to have sold
that piece of ground for any sum of money whatever. She would have
bribed the surveyors, done she knew not what--but now it was too late;
she would not let her mind wander off to what might have been; she would
force herself again to attend to the newspaper columns.
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