ot to Salisbury that way, and gone into the
woods the way he came out of them.

Last of all, that child in the glade--a child strayed from one of the
cottages, or the child of some woodcutter who had brought her with
him, who was perhaps a very little way off, who listened to the tale
of what the child had seen five minutes after she had seen it. Of
course nothing much would be thought of the child's tale at first; but
it would assume importance directly suspicion had been aroused; it
would link up with other circumstances, it would suggest new ideas and
further researches to the minds of detectives, it might be the clue
that eventually hanged him.

It seemed to Dale as he went over things in this quivering, quaking
manner that, from the little girl weaving flowers back to the two Jews
selling slops, he had recruited an army of witnesses to denounce and
destroy him.

Only in one respect had he not bungled. He got rid of the clothes and
hat all right. Cut and torn into narrow stripes they had gone
comfortably down the drains of the temperance hotel in Stamford
Street. That was a night's wise labor. But the labor and thoughtful
care had come too late, on top of all the previous folly.

And he said to himself, "It's prob'ly all up with me. This quiet is
the usual trick of the p'lice to throw you off the scent. They're
playin' wi' me. They let me sim to run free, because they know they
can 'aarve me when they want me."

With such thoughts, he went down-stairs of a morning to talk jovially
with Ridgett, to chaff Miss Yorke; and with the thoughts unchanged he
came up-stairs to glower at Mavis across the breakfast-table.

His thoughts in regard to Mavis were extraordinarily complicated. At
first he had been horribly afraid of her--dreading their meeting as a
crisis, a turning-point, an awful bit of touch-and-go work. It seemed
that she of all people would be the one to suspect the truth. When she
heard of the man's death, surely the idea _must_ have flashed into her
mind: "This is Will's doing." But then perhaps, when no facts appeared
to support the idea, she might have abandoned it. Nevertheless it
would readily come flashing back again--and again, and again.

To his delight, however, he saw that she did not suspect now, and
there was nothing to show that she ever had suspected. And he thought
in the midst of his great relief: "How stupid she is really. Any other
woman would have put two and two together. But she is