Nothing in particular. We were both going back, I suppose, and strolled
along talking."

It appeared to be all that the witness had to tell, and Mr. Pike came
forward perforce. As he stood there, his elegant wide-awake bent in his
hand, he looked more like the wild man of the woods he had been compared
to, than a civilized being. Rough, rude, and abrupt were his tones as he
spoke, and he bent his face and eyes downwards whilst he answered. It was
in those eyes that lay the look which had struck Mr. Elster as being
familiar to him. He persisted in giving his name as Tom, not Thomas.

But if the stranger in the long coat had little evidence to give, Pike
had even less. He had been in the woods that afternoon and sauntered to
the bank of the river just as Lord Hartledon passed in the skiff; but he
had taken very little notice of him. It was only when the last witness,
who came up at the moment, remarked upon the queer manner in which his
lordship held his arm, that he saw it was lying idle.

Not a thing more could he or would he tell. It was all he knew, he said,
and would swear it was all. He went back to Calne with the last witness,
and never saw his lordship again alive.

It did appear to be all, just as it did in the matter of the other man.
The coroner inquired whether he had seen any one else on the banks or
near them, and Pike replied that he had not set eyes on another soul,
which Percival knew to be false, for he had seen _him_. He was told to
put his signature to his evidence, which the clerk had taken down, and
affixed a cross.

"Can't you write?" asked the coroner.

Pike shook his head negatively. "Never learnt," he curtly said. And
Percival believed that to be an untruth equally with the other. He could
not help thinking that the avowal of their immediate return might also be
false: it was just as possible that one or other, or both, had followed
the course of the boat.

Mr. Carteret was examined. He could tell no more than he had already
told. They started together, but he had soon got beyond his lordship,
and had never seen him again alive. There was nothing more to be gleaned
or gathered. Not the smallest suspicion of foul play, or of its being
anything but a most unfortunate accident, was entertained for a moment by
any one who heard the evidence, and the verdict of the jury was to that
effect: Accidental Death.

As the crowd pressed out of the inquest-room, jostling one another in the
gloom of th