supplemental to the church
funeral--than a businesslike inquiry into the circumstances and
occasion of a person's death. A sergeant and constable were present,
but apparently for no reason whatever. Allen talked nonsense, grooms
and servants talked nonsense, everybody paid compliments to the
deceased--and really that was all. At last Mr. Hollis, the coroner,
said the very words that Dale would have liked to put into his
mouth--something to the effect that they had done their melancholy
duty and that it would be useless to ask any more questions.

But Dale, sitting firmly and staring gloomily, felt an internal
paroxysm of terror. Near the lofty doors of the fine state room common
folk stood whispering and nudging one another--cottagers, carters,
woodcutters; and Dale thought "Now I'm in for it. One of those chaps
is going to come forward and tell the coroner that his little girl saw
a strange man in the wood." He imagined it all so strongly that it
almost seemed to happen. "Beg pardon, your honor, I don't rightly know
as, it's wuth mentionin', but my lil' young 'un see'd a scarecrow sort
of a feller not far from they rocks, the mornin' afore."

It did not, however, happen. Nothing happened.

And nothing happened when he came to the Abbey again to attend the
real burial service--except that he found how wrong he had been in
supposing that the fear had reached its highest point. He nearly
fainted when he saw all those policemen--the entire park seeming to be
full of them, a blue helmet under every tree, a glittering line of
buttons that stretched through the courtyards and right round the
church. Inside the church he said to himself, "They've got me now.
They'll tap me on the shoulder as I come out."

Standing in the open air again he wondered at the respite that had
been allowed, and thought, "Yes, but that is always their way. They
never show their hand until they have collected all the evidence. The
detectives, who've been on my track from the word 'go,' prob'ly
advised the relatives to accept the thing as an accident in order to
hoodwink the murderer. The tip was given to that coroner not to probe
deep, because they weren't ready yet with their case;" and it suddenly
occurred to him that he had left deep footsteps in the wood, and that
plaster casts had been made of all these impressions.

He looked across a gravestone in the crowded churchyard and saw a
strange man who was staring at the ground. A detective? He