"
People might wonder how he could have survived a gunshot over the eye;
but was not Lincote a doctor--and an army doctor to boot--when he was
young; and who, in Golden Friars, could dispute with him on points of
surgery? And I believe the truth is, that this mark had been really
made by a pistol bullet.
Mr. Jarlcot, the attorney, would "go bail" he had picked up some sense
in his travels; and honest Turnbull, the host of the George and
Dragon, said heartily:
"We must look out something for him to put his hand to. _Now's_ the
time to make a man of him."
The end of it was that he became, among other things, the sexton of
Golden Friars.
He was a punctual sexton. He meddled with no other person's business;
but he was a silent man, and by no means popular. He was reserved in
company; and he used to walk alone by the shore of the lake, while
other fellows played at fives or skittles; and when he visited the
kitchen of the George, he had his liquor to himself, and in the midst
of the general talk was a saturnine listener. There was something
sinister in this man's face; and when things went wrong with him, he
could look dangerous enough.
There were whispered stories in Golden Friars about Toby Crooke.
Nobody could say how they got there. Nothing is more mysterious than
the spread of rumour. It is like a vial poured on the air. It travels,
like an epidemic, on the sightless currents of the atmosphere, or by
the laws of a telluric influence equally intangible.
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