is a hush about the place, voices are
soft, men talk in groups, the mystery is the one sensation. . . . The
time passes, there are other interests, once more the High Table can
taste its wine. Death is again bundled into noisier streets, into a
harder, shriller air. . . .

2

Olva, on the morning after the discovery of the body, heard from Mrs.
Ridge speculations as to the probable criminal. "You take _my_ word, Mr.
Dune, sir, it was one of them there nasty tramps--always 'anging round
they are, and Miss Annett was only yesterday speakin' to me of a ugly
feller comin' round to their back door and askin' for bread, weren't
you, Miss Annett?"

"I was, indeed, Mrs. Ridge."

"And 'im with the nastiest 'eavy blue jaw you ever saw on a man, 'adn't
'e, Miss Annett?"

"He had, indeed, Mrs. Ridge."

"Ah, I shouldn't wonder--nasty-sort-o'-looking feller. And that
Sannet Wood too--nasty lonely place with its old stones and
all--comfortable?--I _don't_ think."

Olva made inquiries as to the stones.

"Why, ever so old, they say--before Christ, I've 'eard. Used to cut up
'uman flesh and eat it like the pore natives, and there's a ugly lookin'
stone in that very wood where they did it too, or so I've 'eard. Would
you go along that way in the dark, Miss Annett?"

"Not much--I grant _you_, Mrs. Ridge."

"Oh yes! not likely on a dark night, I _don't_ think!--and that pore Mr.
Carfax--well, all I say is, I 'opes they catch 'im, that's all _I_ say
. . ." with further reminiscence concerning Mrs. Birch who had worked
on Carfax's staircase the last ten years and never "'ad no kind of luck.
There was that Mr. Oliver---"

Final dismissal of Mrs. Ridge and Miss Annett.

Meanwhile, strange enough the relief that he felt because the body was
actually removed from that wood. No longer possible now to see it lying
there with the leg bent underneath, the head falling straight back, the
ring on the finger. . . . Curious, too, that the matchbox had not been
discovered; they must have searched pretty thoroughly by now--perhaps
after all it had not been dropped there.

But over him there had fallen a strange lassitude. He was outside,
beyond it all.

And then Craven came to see him. The event had wrought in the boy a
great change. It was precisely with a character like Craven's that such
an incident must cleave a division between youth and manhood. He had,
until last evening, considered nothing for himself; his father's death
had