concourse of people assembled to
witness the interment, and there was an impressive silence when the
corpse was committed to the grave. Afterwards, as was natural, much
discussion followed on the verdict at the inquest. It was the
common opinion that the jury could have brought in no other verdict,
considering the nature of the evidence supplied; but many people
declared that Captain Hervey of The Diver should have been called. If
the deceased had enemies, said these wiseacres, it was probable that he
would have talked about them to the skipper. But they forgot that the
witnesses called at the inquest, including the mother of the dead man,
had insisted that Bolton had no enemies, so it is difficult to see what
they expected Captain Hervey to say.

After the funeral, the journals made but few remarks about the mystery.
Every now and then it was hinted that a clue had been found, and that
the police would sooner or later track down the criminal. But all this
loose chatter came to nothing, and as the days went by, the public--in
London, at all events--lost interest in the case. The enterprising
weekly paper that had offered the furnished house and the life income
to the person who found the assassin received an intimation from
the Government that such a lottery could not be allowed. The paper,
therefore, returned to Limericks, and the amateur detectives, like so
many Othellos, found their occupation gone. Then a political crisis took
place in the far East, and the fickle public relegated the murder
of Bolton to the list of undiscovered crimes. Even the Scotland Yard
detectives, failing to find a clue, lost interest in the matter, and it
seemed as though the mystery of Bolton's death would not be solved until
the Day of Judgment.

In the village, however, people still continued to be keenly interested,
since Bolton was one of themselves, and, moreover, Widow Anne kept up a
perpetual outcry about her murdered boy. She had lost the small weekly
sum which Sidney had allowed her out of his wages, so the neighbors, the
gentry of the surrounding country, and the officers at the Fort sent
her ample washing to do. Widow Anne in a few weeks had quite a large
business, considering the size of the village, and philosophically
observed to a neighbor that "It was an ill wind which blew no one any
good," adding also that Sidney was more good to her dead than alive. But
even in Gartley the villagers grew weary of discussing a mystery whi