Little more was said. Hewitt condoled with Miss Rewse as well as he might, and she presently took her departure. Even as she descended the stairs a messenger came with a short note from Mr. Bowyer enclosing a telegram just received from Cullanin. The telegram ran thus:-- _Body exhumed. Death from shot-wound. No trace of small-pox. Nothing yet heard of Main. Have communicated with coroner.--O’Reilly._ II Hewitt and Mr. Bowyer travelled towards Mayo together, Mr. Bowyer restless and loquacious on the subject of the business in hand, and Hewitt rather bored thereby. He resolutely declined to offer an opinion on any single detail of the case till he had examined the available evidence, and his occasional remarks on matters of general interest, the scenery and so forth, struck his companion, unused to business of the sort which had occasioned the journey, as strangely cold-blooded and indifferent. Telegrams had been sent ordering that no disarrangement of the contents of the cottage was to be allowed pending their arrival, and Hewitt well knew that nothing more was practicable till the site was reached. At Ballymaine, where the train was left at last, they stayed for the night, and left early the next morning for Cullanin, where a meeting with Dr. O’Reilly at the mortuary had been appointed. There the body lay stripped of its shroud, calm and gray, and beginning to grow ugly, with a scarcely noticeable breach in the flesh of the left breast. “The wound has been thoroughly cleansed, closed and stopped with a carbolic plug before interment,” Dr. O’Reilly said. He was a middle-aged, grizzled man, with a face whereon many recent sleepless nights had left their traces. “I have not thought it necessary to do anything in the way of dissection. The bullet is not present, it has passed clean through the body, between the ribs both back and front, piercing the heart on its way. The death must have been instantaneous.” Hewitt quickly examined the two wounds, back and front, as the doctor turned the body over, and then asked: “Perhaps, Dr. O’Reilly, you have had some experience of a gunshot wound before this?” The doctor smiled grimly. “I think so,” he answered, with just enough of brogue in his words to hint his nationality and no more. “I was an army surgeon for a good many years before I came to Cullanin, and saw service in Ashanti and in India.” “Come then,” Hewitt said, “you’re an expert. Would it have been possible for the shot to have been fired from behind?” “Oh, no. See! the bullet entering makes a wound of quite a different character from that of the bullet leaving.” “Have you any idea of the weapon used?” “A large revolver, I should think; perhaps of the regulation size; that is, I should judge the bullet to have been a conical one of about the size fitted to such a weapon--smaller than that from a rifle.” “Can you form an idea of from what distance the shot was fired?”