Johnny Ludlow Second Series Part 19

"You are absolutely certain, Mrs. Reed, that these pills, from which you took out two to give the deceased children, were the very self-same pills you had from Abel Crew?"

"I be sure and certain of it, sir. n.o.body never put a finger upon the box but me. It stood all the while in the corner o' the press-shelf in the children's bedroom. Twice a week when I got upon a chair to dust the shelf, I see it there. There was n.o.body in the house but me, except the little ones. My husband don't concern himself with the places and things."

Circ.u.mstantial evidence could not well go farther. Mrs. Reed was dismissed, and the coroner told Abel Crew to come near the table. He did as he was bid, and stood there upright and manly, a gentle look on his face.

"You have heard the evidence, Abel Crew," said the coroner. "The pills have been a.n.a.lyzed and found to contain a certain portion of a.r.s.enic--a great deal more than enough to kill a child. What have you to say to it?"

"Only this, sir; only what I said before. That the pills a.n.a.lyzed were not my pills. The pills I gave to Mrs. Reed contained neither a.r.s.enic nor any other poison."

"It is showing great obstinacy on your part to repeat that," returned the coroner, impatiently. "Mrs. Reed swears that the pills were the same pills; and she evidently speaks the truth."

"I am sure she thinks she speaks it," replied Abel, gently.

"Nevertheless, sir, I a.s.sure you she is mistaken. In some way the pills must have been changed whilst in her possession, box and all."

"Why, man, in what manner do you suppose they could have been changed?"

"I don't know, sir. All I do know is, that the pills and the box produced here last week were not, either of them, the pills and the box she had from me. Never a box went out from me, sir, but had my private mark on it--the mark I spoke of. Jones the constable searched my place whilst I was detained in the lock-up, and took away all the pill-boxes out of it. Let him testify whether he found one without the mark."

At this juncture a whole cargo of pill-boxes were shot out of a bag on the table by old Jones, some empty, some filled with pills. The coroner and jury began to examine them, and found the mark on all, lids and boxes.

"And if you'd be so good as to cause the pills to be a.n.a.lyzed, sir, they would be found perfectly free from poison," resumed Abel. "They are made from herbs that possess healing properties, not irritant; a poisonous herb, whether poisonous in itself, or one from which poison may be extracted, I never plucked. Believe me, sir, for I am telling the truth; the truth before Heaven."

The coroner said nothing for a minute or two: I think the words impressed him. He began lifting the lid again from one or two of the boxes.

"What are these pills for? All for the same disorder?"

"They were made up for different disorders, sir."

"And pray how do you distinguish them?"

"I cannot distinguish them now. They have been mixed. Even if returned to me I could not use them. I have a piece of furniture at home, sir, that I call my pill-case. It has various drawers in it, each drawer being labelled with the sort of pills kept in it: camomile, dandelion, and so on. Mr. Jones must be able to corroborate this."

Old Jones nodded. He had never seen nothing neater nor more exact in all his life, than the keeping o' them there pills. He, Mr. Jones, had tumbled the drawerfuls indiscriminately into his bag, and so mixed them.

"And they will be so much loss to me," quietly observed Abel. "It does not matter."

"Were you brought up to the medical profession?" cried the coroner--and some of us thought he put the question in irony.

"No, sir," replied Abel, taking it seriously. "I have learnt the healing art, as supplied by herbs and roots, and I know their value. Herbs will cure sometimes where the regular doctor fails. I have myself cured cases with them that the surgeons could not cure; cases that but for me, under G.o.d, might never have been cured in this world. I make no boast of it; any one else might do as much who had made herbs a study as I have."

"Are you making a fortune by it?" went on the coroner.

Abel shook his head.

"I have a small income of my own, sir, and it is enough for my simple wants. What little money I make by my medicines, and honey, and that--it is not much--I find uses for in other ways. I indulge in a new book now and then; and there are many poor people around who need a bit of help sometimes."

"You 'read' the stars, I am told, Abel Crew. What do you read in them?"

"The same that I read, sir, in all other of nature's works: G.o.d's wonderful hand. His wisdom, His power, His providence."

Perhaps the coroner thought to bring Abel to ridicule in his replies: if so, it was a mistake, for he seemed to be getting the worst of it himself. At any rate, he quitted the subject abruptly, brushed his energy up, and began talking to the jury.

The drift of the conversation was, so far as the room could hear it, that Crew's pills, and only Crew's, could have been the authors of the mischief to the two deceased children, whose bodies they were sitting upon, and that Crew must be committed to take his trial for manslaughter. "Hester Reed's evidence," he continued, "is so clear and positive, that it quite puts aside any suspicion of the box of pills having been changed----"

"The box had not my mark upon it, sir," respectfully spoke Abel Crew, his tone anxious.

"Don't interrupt me," rebuked the coroner, sharply. "As to the box not having what he calls his private mark upon it," he added to the jury, "that in my opinion tells little. Because a man has put a mark on fifty pill-boxes, he is not obliged to have put it on the fifty-first. An unintentional omission is readily made. It appears to me----"

"Am I in time? Is it all over? Is Abel Crew found guilty?"

This unceremonious interruption to the official speech came from a woman's voice. The door of the room was thrown open with a fling, considerably discomposing those who had their backs against it and were taken unawares, and they were pushed right and left by the struggles of some one to get to the front. The coroner looked daggers; old Jones lifted his staff; but the intruder forced her way forward with resolute equanimity. Cathy Reed: we never remembered to call her Parrifer. Cathy in her Sunday-going gown and a pink bonnet.

"How dare you?" cried the coroner. "What do you mean by this? Who are you?"

"I have come rushing over from Tewkesbury to clear Abel Crew," returned Cathy, recovering her breath after the fight. "The pills that killed the children were my pills."

The commotion this avowal caused in the room was beyond describing. The coroner stared, the jury all turned to look at the speaker, the crowd trod upon one another.

"And sorry to my heart I am that it should have been so," went on Cathy.

"I loved those two dear little ones as if they were my own, and I'd rather my pills had killed myself. Just look at that, please, Mr.

Coroner."

The ease with which Cathy spoke to the official gentleman, the coolness with which she put down a pill-box on the green cloth before him, took the room by surprise. As Ann Dovey remarked, later, "She must ha' learnt that there manner in her travels with young Parrifer."

"What is this?" questioned the coroner, curtly, picking up the box.

"Perhaps you'll ask Mr. Crew whether he knows it, sir, before I say what it is," returned Cathy.

The coroner had opened it. It contained seven pills; just the size of the other pills, and looking exactly like them. On the lid and on the box was the private mark spoken of by Abel Crew.

"That is my box, sir; and these--I am certain of it--are my pills,"

spoke Abel, earnestly, bending over the shoulder of the first juryman to look into the box. "The box and the pills that I gave to Mrs. Reed."

"And so they are, Abel Crew," rejoined Cathy, emphatically. "The week before last, which I was spending at home at father's, I changed the one pill-box for the other, inadvertent, you see"--with a nod to the coroner--"and took the wrong box away with me. And I wish both boxes had been in the sea before I'd done it."

Cathy was ordered to give her account more clearly, and did so. She had been suffering from illness, accompanied by neuralgia, and a doctor at Tewkesbury had prescribed some pills for it, one to be taken occasionally. The chemist who made them up told her they contained a.r.s.enic. He was about to write the directions on the box, when Cathy, who was in a hurry, s.n.a.t.c.hed it from him, saying she could not wait for that bother, flung down the money, and departed. This box of pills she had brought with her on her visit to her father's, lest she should find occasion to take one; and she had put it on the shelf of the press, side by side with the other pill-box, to be out of the way of the children.

Upon leaving, she took up the wrong box inadvertently: carrying away Abel Crew's pills, leaving her own. There lay the explanation of the mystery of the fatal mistake. Mrs. Reed had not known that Cathy had any pills with her; the girl, who was just as light-headed as ever, not having chanced to mention it; and Cathy had the grace to dust the room herself whilst she was there.

"When father and his wife sent me word about the death of the two little twins, and that it was some pills of Abel Crew's that had done it, I never once thought o' my pills," added Cathy. "They didn't as much as come into my head. But late last night I got lent to me last Sat.u.r.day's _Worcester Herald_, and there I read the inquest, and what Crew had said about the marks he put on his pill-boxes, and mother's evidence about never having shifted the pill-box from its place on the press. 'Sure and I couldn't have changed the boxes,' thought I to myself; and upstairs I ran in a fright to look at the box I had brought away. Yes, there it was--Abel Crew's box with the marks on it; and I knew then that I had left my own pills at home here, and that they had killed the babies. As soon as I could get away this morning--which was not as soon as I wanted to--I started to come over. And that's the history--and the blessed truth."

Of course it was the truth. Abel's beautiful face had a glow upon it.

"I knew I should be cleared in G.o.d's good time," he breathed. The Squire pounced upon him, and shook both his hands as if he would never let them go again. Duffham held out his.

So that was the end of the story. Cathy was reprimanded by the coroner for her carelessness, and burst into tears in his face.

"And thee come off home wi' thee, and see me chuck that there powder into the fire; and don't go making a spectacle o' th' self again," cried Dovey, sharply, in his wife's ear. "Thee just let me catch thee bringing in more o' the dratted stuff; that's all."

"I shall never look at a black-beedle again, Jack, without shivering,"