the right register, and common
caution would suggest his locking the door on the inside in case of
intrusion on the part of any inquisitive stranger, or on my part, if I
happened to be in the neighbourhood at the time.

I cannot believe that it was any part of his intention to make the
destruction of the register appear to be the result of accident, by
purposely setting the vestry on fire. The bare chance that prompt
assistance might arrive, and that the books might, by the remotest
possibility, be saved, would have been enough, on a moment's
consideration, to dismiss any idea of this sort from his mind.
Remembering the quantity of combustible objects in the vestry--the
straw, the papers, the packing-cases, the dry wood, the old worm-eaten
presses--all the probabilities, in my estimation, point to the fire as
the result of an accident with his matches or his light.

His first impulse, under these circumstances, was doubtless to try to
extinguish the flames, and failing in that, his second impulse
(ignorant as he was of the state of the lock) had been to attempt to
escape by the door which had given him entrance. When I had called to
him, the flames must have reached across the door leading into the
church, on either side of which the presses extended, and close to
which the other combustible objects were placed. In all probability,
the smoke and flame (confined as they were to the room) had been too
much for him when he tried to escape by the inner door. He must have
dropped in his death-swoon--he must have sunk in the place where he was
found--just as I got on the roof to break the skylight window. Even if
we had been able, afterwards, to get into the church, and to burst open
the door from that side, the delay must have been fatal. He would have
been past saving, long past saving, by that time. We should only have
given the flames free ingress into the church--the church, which was
now preserved, but which, in that event, would have shared the fate of
the vestry. There is no doubt in my mind, there can be no doubt in the
mind of any one, that he was a dead man before ever we got to the empty
cottage, and worked with might and main to tear down the beam.

This is the nearest approach that any theory of mine can make towards
accounting for a result which was visible matter of fact. As I have
described them, so events passed to us outside. As I have related it,
so his body was found.

The inquest was adjourned