country-side swarmed to the rescue, and the family
were saved, with one exception, the master. He did
not appear. Everybody was frantic over this loss, and
two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in ransacking
the burning house seeking that valuable personage.
But after a while he was found -- what was left of
him -- which was his corpse. It was in a copse three
hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a
dozen places.

Who had done this? Suspicion fell upon a humble
family in the neighborhood who had been lately treated
with peculiar harshness by the baron; and from these
people the suspicion easily extended itself to their
relatives and familiars. A suspicion was enough; my