was broken.

His hat was found on the floor, where he had probably laid it, with
his handkerchief in it.

The mystery now began to clear a little; for a bell--one of the chime
hung in the tower--was found where it had rolled to, against the wall,
with blood and hair on the rim of it, which corresponded with the
grizzly fracture across the front of his head.

The sack that lay in the vestibule was examined, and found to contain
all the church plate; a silver salver that had disappeared, about a
month before, from Dr. Lincote's store of valuables; the Vicar's gold
pencil-case, which he thought he had forgot in the vestry book; silver
spoons, and various other contributions, levied from time to time off
a dozen different households, the mysterious disappearance of which
spoils had, of late years, begun to make the honest little community
uncomfortable. Two bells had been taken down from the chime; and now
the shrewd part of the assemblage, putting things together, began to
comprehend the nefarious plans of the sexton, who lay mangled and dead
on the floor of the tower, where only two days ago he had tolled the
holy bell to call the good Christians of Golden Friars to worship.

The body was carried into the yard of the George and Dragon and laid
in the old coach-house; and the townsfolk came grouping in to have a
peep at the corpse, and stood round, looking darkly, and talking as
low as if they were in a church.

The Vicar, in gaiters and slightly shovel hat, stood erect, as one in
a little circle of notables--the doctor, the attorney, Sir Geoffrey
Mardykes, who happened to be in the town, and Turnbull, the host--in
the centre of the paved yard, they having made an inspection of the
body, at which troops of the village stragglers, to-ing and fro-ing,
were gaping and frowning as they whispered their horrible conjectures.

"What d'ye think o' that?" said Tom Scales, the old hostler of the
George, looking pale, with a stern, faint smile on his lips, as he and
Dick Linklin sauntered out of the coach-house together.

"The deaul will hev his ain noo," answered Dick, in his friend's ear.
"T' sexton's got a craigthraw like he gav' the lass over the clints of
Scarsdale; ye mind what the ald soger telt us when he hid his face in
the kitchen of the George here? By Jen! I'll ne'er forget that story."

"I ween 'twas all true enough," replied the hostler; "and the sizzup
he gav' the sleepin' man wi' t' poker across the forehead.