Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 45: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

28 REYNOLDS’ WORKS | gether, mademoiselle intimating to the landlady that they were going to visit some friends whom she had in Gains- borough, and that they might not be home till eleven o’clock. The landlord had noticed that the maid carried a large brown paper parcel in her hand, but what it contained he did not know,:and had not given the matter a thought at the time. From that moment he had not seen the deceased females again. The peasant was the next witness called in. He stated that at about nine o’clock the lady and her maid approached the cottage where he dwelt with his mother and sister, and as he was standing outside the door at the time, they asked him to be permitted to sit down for a little while, as they had taken a longer walk than they had at first intended, and were tired. They were invited to enter; they sat down, and such refreshments as the cottage afforded were offered, of which they partook. Soon afterward two gentlemen came ~ to the cottage, one having been there before some few days previously. The peasant then described how Mr. Deveril saved a woman from drowning on the occasion to which he referred, and how that circumstance had rendered him an inmate of the cottage for a whole night. The peasant, in answer to the coroner, stated that it was perfectly evident that Mr. Gunthorpe and Mr. Deveril were totally unknown to the two females previous to meeting them there, as he gathered from the conversation which passed between them at the time. The lady and her maid took their departure, but no one inside the cottage at the time had any opportunity of perceiving in what direction they proceeded. The two gen- tlemen waited perhaps ten minutes longer, and gave his (the peasant’s) mother five sovereigns on account of the kind treatment one of them had experienced, as previously de- scribed, at the cottage. It was perhaps three-quarters of an hour afterward that Mr. Deveril came rushing back with horrified looks, bearing the intelligence that the two females were murdered, and ordering him (the peasant) to proceed at once to Gainsborough and give the alarm. William Deveril was the next witness called in. He stated that he had arrived with his friend Mr. Gunthorpe at Gains- borough on the previous day, and that in the evening they set out along the bank of the river for the purpose of pro- ceeding to Saxondale Castle. He then described how he and Gomicbooks: co