swords and regalia, crudely coated with gilded paper, obviously
appertained to the puerile ceremonials of the Order of Druids.

I had exhausted the interest of these relics and had transferred my
attentions to the picture gallery when the other spectators and the
witnesses began to arrive. Hastily I seated myself in the only
comfortable chair besides the one placed at the head of the table,
presumably for the coroner; and I had hardly done so when the latter
entered accompanied by the jury. Immediately after them came the
sergeant, Inspector Badger, one or two plain-clothes men, and finally
the divisional surgeon.

The coroner took his seat at the head of the table and opened his book,
and the jury seated themselves on a couple of benches on one side of the
long table. I looked with some interest at the twelve "good men and
true." They were a representative group of British tradesmen, quiet,
attentive, and rather solemn; but my attention was particularly
attracted by a small man with a very large head and a shock of
upstanding hair whom I had diagnosed, after a glance at his intelligent
but truculent countenance and the shiny knees of his trousers, as the
village cobbler. He sat between the broad-shouldered foreman, who looked
like a blacksmith, and a dogged, red-faced man whose general aspect of
prosperous greasiness suggested the calling of a butcher.

"The inquiry, gentlemen," the coroner commenced, "upon which we are now
entering concerns itself with two questions. The first is that of
identity: Who was this person whose body we have just viewed? The second
is, How, when, and by what means did he come by his death? We will take
the identity first and begin with the circumstances under which the body
was discovered."

Here the cobbler stood up and raised an excessively dirty hand.

"I rise, Mr. Chairman," said he, "to a point of order." The other
jurymen looked at him curiously and some of them, I regret to say,
grinned. "You have referred, sir," he continued, "to the body which we
have just viewed. I wish to point out that we have not viewed a body: we
have viewed a collection of bones."

"We will refer to them as the remains, if you prefer it," said the
coroner.

"I do prefer it," was the reply, and the objector sat down.

"Very well," rejoined the coroner, and he proceeded to call the
witnesses, of whom the first was the labourer who had discovered the
bones in the watercress-bed.

"Do you happen to kn