ot trouble yourself," returned Jan. "Stop where you are,
and digest your supper."

He, Jan, was speeding off, when a fresh deputation arrived. Twenty
anxious faces at the least, all in a commotion, their tongues going
together. "Dan was frothing dreadful, and his legs was twitchin' like
one in the epilepsies."

"What has caused it?" asked Jan. "I saw him well enough an hour or two
ago."

"He see a dead man, sir; as it's said. We can't come to the bottom of
it, 'cause of his not answering no questions. He be too bad, he be."

"He did see a dead man," put in Polly Dawson, who made one of the
deputation, and was proud of being able to add her testimony to the
asserted fact. "Leastways, he said he did. I was a-buying some silk,
sir, in at Mother Duff's shop, and Susan Peckaby was in there too, she
was, a-talking rubbish about her white donkey, when Dan flounders in
upon us in a state not to be told, a-frightening of us dreadful, and
a-smashing in the winder with his arm. And he said he'd seen a dead
man."

Jan could not make sense of the tale. There was nobody lying dead in
Deerham, that he knew of. He pushed the crowd round the door right and
left to get space to enter. The shop was pretty full already, but
numbers pushed in after Jan. Dan had been carried into the kitchen at
the back of the shop, and was laid upon the floor, a pillow under his
head. The kitchen was more crowded than the shop; there was not
breathing space; and room could hardly be found for Jan.

The shop was Mrs. Duff's department. If she chose to pack it full of
people to the ceiling, it was her affair: but Jan made the kitchen,
where the boy lay, his.

"What's the matter with him, sir?" was the eager question to Jan, the
moment he had cast his eyes on the invalid.

"I may be able to ascertain as soon as I have elbow room," replied Jan.
"Suppose you give it me. Mrs. Duff may stop, but nobody else."

Jan's easy words carried authority in their tone, and the company turned
tail and began to file out.

"Couldn't you do with me in, as well as his mother, sir?" asked Susan
Peckaby. "I was here when he came in, I was; and I knowed what it was
a'most afore he spoke. He have been frightened by that thing in the
pound. Only a few minutes afore, it had turned my inside almost out."

"No, I can't," answered Jan. "I must have the room clear. Perhaps I
shall send away his mother."

"I should ha' liked to know for sure," meekly observed Susan Peckaby,