Page:Long pack, or, The robbers discovered (3).pdf/22

22 time grown so dark, that nothing could be seen with precision, and that they all re- mained in anxious incertitude, until the opening day discovered to them, by degrees, that the corpses were removed, and nothing left but large sheets of frozen blood, and the morning's alarms by the ghost and the noise of horses, had been occasioned by some of the friends of the men that had fallen, conveying them away for fear of a dis- covery. Next morning the news flew like fire, and the three servants were much incommoded by crowds of idle and officious people that gathered about the house, some inquiring after the smallest particulars, some begging to see the body that lay in the parlour, and others pleased themselves with poring over the sheets of crimson ice, and tracing the drops of blood on the road down the wood. The Colonel had no country factor, nor any particular friend in the neighbourhood, so the affair was not pursued with that speed which was requisite to the discovery of the accomplices, which if it had, would have been productive of some very unpleasant circumstances, by involving sundry respect able families, as it afterwards appeared but too evidently. Dr. Herbert, the physician who attended the family occasionally, wrote to the Colonel, by post, concerning the affair