r Vicar indulged in
a white one. He gasped twice, struggled slightly, and then lay quietly
in the butler's arms.

"Oh, sir!" burst forth the man in a horror-stricken voice to his master,
"this is surely death!"

It surely was. George West, who had gone there but just before in the
height of health and strength, had breathed his last.

How did it happen? How could it have happened? Ay, how indeed? It was a
question which has never been entirely solved in Church Leet to this
day.

Captain Monk's account, both privately and at the inquest, was this: As
they talked further together, after Michael left the room, the Vicar
went on to browbeat him shamefully about the new chimes, vowing they
should never play, never be heard; at last, rising in an access of
passion, the Parson struck him (the Captain) in the face. He returned
the blow--who wouldn't return it?--and the Vicar fell. He believed his
head must have struck against the iron fender in falling: if not, if the
blow had been an unlucky one (it took effect just behind the left ear),
it was only given in self-defence. The jury, composed of Captain Monk's
tenants, expressed themselves satisfied, and returned a verdict of
Accidental Death.

"A false account," pronounced poor Mrs. West, in her dire tribulation.
"My husband never struck him--never; he was not one to be goaded into
unbecoming anger, even by Captain Monk. _George struck no blow
whatever_; I can answer for it. If ever a man was murdered, he has
been."

Curious rumours arose. It was said that Mrs. Carradyne, taking the air
on the terrace outside in the calmness of the autumn evening, heard the
fatal quarrel through the open window; that she heard Mr. West, after he
had received the death blow, wail forth a prophecy (or whatever it might
be called) that those chimes would surely be accursed; that whenever
their sound should be heard, so long as they were suffered to remain in
the tower, it should be the signal of woe to the Monk family.

Mrs. Carradyne utterly denied this; she had not been on the terrace at
all, she said. Upon which the onus was shifted to Michael: who, it was
suspected, had stolen out to listen to the end of the quarrel, and had
heard the ominous words. Michael, in his turn, also denied it; but he
was not believed. Anyway, the covert whisper had gone abroad and would
not be laid.

III.

Captain Monk speedily filled up the vacant living, appointing to it the
Reverend Thomas Dancox, a