it?" he demanded, with
something like a covert sneer. "You'll know all about it, Krevin, I
reckon! What's your opinion?"

Krevin Crood looked over the speaker with a quiet glance of conscious
superiority. However much he might have come down in the world, he still
retained the manners of a well-bred and educated man, and Brent was not
surprised to hear a refined and cultured accent when he presently spoke.

"If you are referring to the unfortunate and lamentable occurrence of
last night, Mr. Spelliker," he answered, "I prefer to express no
opinion. The matter is _sub judice_."

"Latin!" sneered the questioner. "Ay! you can hide a deal o' truth away
behind Latin, you old limbs o' the law! But I reckon the truth'll come
out, all the same."

"It is not a legal maxim, but a sound old English saying that murder
will out," remarked Krevin quietly. "I think you may take it, Mr.
Spelliker, that in this case, as in most others, the truth will be
arrived at."

"Ay, well, if all accounts be true, it's a good job for such as you that
the Mayor is removed," said Spelliker half-insolently. "They say he was
going to be down on all you pensioned gentlemen--what?"

"That, again, is a matter which I do not care to discuss," replied
Krevin. He turned away, approaching a horsy-looking individual who stood
near. "Good-morning, Mr. Gates," he said pleasantly. "Got rid of your
brown cob yet? If not, I was talking to Simpson, the vet, yesterday--I
rather fancy you'd find a customer in him."

Peppermore nudged his companion's arm. Brent leaned nearer to him.

"Not get any change out of him!" whispered Peppermore. "Cool old
customer, isn't he? _Sub judice_, eh? Good! And yet--if there's a man in
all Hathelsborough that's likely to know what straws are sailing on the
undercurrent, Mr. Brent, Krevin Crood's the man! But you'll come across
him before you're here long--nobody can be long in Hathelsborough
without knowing Krevin!"

They left Bull's then, and after a little talk in the market-place about
the matter of paramount importance Brent returned to the _Chancellor_,
thinking about what he had just seen and heard. It seemed to him, now
more assuredly than ever, that he was in the midst of a peculiarly
difficult maze, in a network of chicanery and deceit, in an underground
burrow full of twistings and turnings that led he could not tell
whither. An idea had flashed through his mind as he looked at Krevin
Crood in the broken man's bri