TWO:But though the jostling was no longer dangerous, Handshut still kept his arm about Rose, and held her close to his side. Now and then she made a feeble effort as if to free herself, but he held her fast, and she never put out her full strength. They walked as if in a dream, they two together, not speaking to anyone, not speaking to each other. Rose saw as if in a dream the Sign of Virgo hanging above Stone. The dipping of the lane showed the Kentish marshes down in the valley, with[Pg 311] the hills of Kent beyond them, twinkling with lights. The band lifted the strains of Hearts of Oak and Cheer, Boys, Cheer above the thud of marching feet, or occasionally drifted into sentiment with Love's Pilgrimwhile every now and then, regardless of what was being played, two hundred throats would bray:That same day, Calverley summoned, or rather packed, a jury at which he himself presided; and a verdict of wilful murder was returned against Edith. Apprehensive, however, that the charge of poisoning might not be sustained upon the unsupported testimony of Mary Byles, he easily influenced the credulous jurors to believe that witchcraft had as much to do with the child's death as poison. His usual tact, however, had forsaken him on this occasion, and it was not until the verdict was announced and recorded, that the unwelcome conviction flashed across his mind, that the temporal courts could exercise no jurisdiction over the crime of witchcraft. It was now too late to alter the language of the inquisition. It had gone forth to hundreds who awaited its promulgation with intense anxiety; and the language of the verdict that "Edith Holgrave delivered to Mary Byles, a certain charmed or poisonous drug, for the purpose of destroying Roland De Boteler, and which said drug was administered to, and caused the death of, the said Roland," was, in a few hours, familiar to the whole town and neighbourhood.
