Thoroughly
aroused, Gabriel, who was a bold man and not easily daunted, made
straight to the spot, urging on his stout little horse as if for life or
death.
The matter indeed looked sufficiently serious, for, coming to the place
whence the cries had proceeded, he descried the figure of a man extended
in an apparently lifeless state upon the pathway, and, hovering round
him, another person with a torch in his hand, which he waved in the air
with a wild impatience, redoubling meanwhile those cries for help which
had brought the locksmith to the spot.
'What's here to do?' said the old man, alighting. 'How's
this--what--Barnaby?'
The bearer of the torch shook his long loose hair back from his eyes,
and thrusting his face eagerly into that of the locksmith, fixed upon
him a look which told his history at once.
'You know me, Barnaby?' said Varden.
He nodded--not once or twice, but a score of times, and that with a
fantastic exaggeration which would have kept his head in motion for
an hour, but that the locksmith held up his finger, and fixing his eye
sternly upon him caused him to desist; then pointed to the body with an
inquiring look.
'There's blood upon him,' said Barnaby with a shudder.
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