Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/213

Rh This is beyond the "fondling's" comprehension, who evidently doesn't understand the drift of the query, and as evidently doesn't altogether like it, for he says,

"Don't! Come, I say, don't, now."

"How can it be him," continues Mr. Peters, enlarging upon the question, "when I found him dead myself out upon that there heath, and took him back to the station, and afterwards see him buried, which would have been between four cross roads with a stake druv' through him if he'd poisoned himself fifty years ago?"

This rather obscure speech is no more to the "fondling's" liking than the last, for he cries out more energetically than before, "I say, now, I tell you I don't like it, father. Don't you try it on now, please. What does it mean? Who's been dead fifty years ago, with a stake druv' through 'em, and four cross roads on a heath? Who?"

Mr. Peters puts his head out of the window, and directing the attention of the "fondling" to the elegant equestrian they are following, says, emphatically, upon his fingers,

"Him!"

"Dead, is he?" said the "fondling," clinging very close to his adopted parent. "Dead! and very well he looks, considerin'; but," he continued, in an awful and anxious whisper, "where's the stake and the four cross roads as was druv' through him? Does he wear that 'ere loose coat to hide 'em?"

Mr. Peters didn't answer this inquiry, but seemed to be ruminating, and, if one may be allowed the expression, thought aloud upon his fingers, as it was his habit to do at times.

"There couldn't be two men so much alike, surely. That one I found dead was the one I saw at the public talkin' to the young woman; and if so, this is another one, for that one was dead as sure as eggs is eggs. When eggs ceases to be eggs, which," continued Mr. Peters, discoursively, "considerin' they're sellin' at twenty for a shilling, French, and dangerous, if you're not partial to young parboiled chickens, is not likely yet awhile, why, then, that one I found on the heath will come to life again."

The "fondling" was too busy stretching his neck out of the window of the cab, in his eagerness to keep his eye upon the Count de Marolles, to pay any attention to Mr. Peters's fingers. The outside of St. Pauls, and the performance of Punch and Judy, were very well in their way, but they were mild dissipations indeed, compared to the delight of following a ghost which had had a stake driven through his phantasmal form and wore lavender kid gloves.

"There was one thing," continued the musing detective, "which struck me as cnriouscurious [sic], when I found the body of that young gent. Where was the scar from the sovering as that