Simon Basset chuckled dryly and looked at the others with conclusive
triumph. His face was full of converging lines of nose and chin and
brows, which seemed to bring it to a general point of craft and
astuteness. Even his grizzled hair slanted forward in a stiff cowlick
over his forehead, and his face bristled sharply with his gray beard.
Simon Basset was the largest land-owner in the village, and the dust
and loam of his own acres seemed to have formed a gray grime over all
his awkward homespun garb. Never a woman he met but looked
apprehensively at his great, clomping, mud-clogged boots.

It was believed by many that Simon Basset never removed a suit of
clothes, after he had once put it on, until it literally dropped from
him in rags. He was also said to have argued, when taken to task for
this most untidy custom, that birds and animals never shifted their
coats until they were worn out, and it behooved men to follow their
innocent and natural habits as closely as possible.

Simon Basset, sitting in an old leather-cushioned arm-chair in the
midst of the lounging throng, waited for applause after his
conclusive opinion upon Abel Edwards's disappearance; but there were
only affirmative grunts from a few. Many had their own views.

"I ain't noways clear in my mind that Abel did kill himself," said a
tall man, with a great length of thin, pale whiskers falling over his
breast. He had a vaguely elongated effect, like a shadow, and had,
moreover, a way of standing behind people like one. When he spoke
everybody started and looked around at him.

"I'd like to know what you think did happen to him, Adoniram Judd,"
cried Simon Basset.

"I don't think Abel Edwards ever killed himself," repeated the tall
man, solemnly. His words had weight, for he was a distant relative of
the missing man.

"Do you know of anybody that had anything agin him?" demanded Simon
Basset.

"No, I dun'no' 's I do," admitted the tall man.

"Then what in creation would anybody want to kill him for? Guess they
wouldn't be apt to do it for anything they would get out of Abel
Edwards." Simon Basset chuckled triumphantly; and in response there
was a loud and exceedingly bitter laugh from a man sitting on an old
stool next to him. Everybody started, for the man was Ozias Lamb,
Abel Edwards's brother-in-law.

"What ye laughin' at?" inquired Simon Basset, defiantly; but he edged
his chair away a little at the same time. Ozias Lamb had the
reputati