He was thankful to get back to work, and plainly immensely relieved to find that, during his absence, the others had made such progress with the paling that the scene of his employer's seizure had been left well behind. A week had elapsed since that cloud-burst, and, as before, Lyveden was finishing his lunch, when he noticed that Stokes, the second carpenter, had not returned. The fellow had gone to his quarters, to fetch some implement, nearly an hour before. When another half-hour had gone by, Anthony, in some impatience, dispatched Blake for the tool. Twenty minutes later the latter returned, chisel in hand, but with no news of his mate. When it was five o'clock and there was still no sign of Stokes, Anthony struck work and ordered an organized search. It seemed rather hopeless, but, on the whole, the best thing to do. The man was missing. If possible, more zealous than any, it was unthinkable that he was playing truant. He could not have been spirited away. Anthony supposed gloomily that he had met with a mishap. There was, indeed, no other solution. It was getting quite dark when they found him down in a little dell upon a patch of greensward. Considering that he was a joiner, and not a sexton, he had made remarkable progress with a very creditable grave, which, he explained, was to receive the dead with which the woods were distributed. He added that it was a disgrace to leave so many corpses lying about, and pointed out that he had removed his boots for fear of treading upon them. When they sought to humour him, he became suspicious and violent, and there was quite a struggle before he was overpowered. CHAPTER VIII THE POWER OF THE DOG The accident was inevitable. Everybody present, except the driver of the green taxi, saw that. And he was so fearful lest the driver of the red omnibus should lose one withering participle of the apostrophe he had provoked, that he could not be bothered with the exigencies of traffic and the Rule of the Road. Everybody, including Mr. Justice Molehill, shouted impotently; a small page, on his way to the postoffice, stood agonizedly upon one leg; and a moment later there was a splintering crash, the blue taxi shed a cabin-trunk and a suit-case on to the pavement, and then, after a paralyzing moment of indecision, came heavily to rest against the panels of its aggressor. Now, his lordship had no desire to become embroiled in a dispute which might easily beget a subpoena. Still, because of his elevation to the Bench, he had not resigned the fellowship of Man, and, since he was the nearest individual to the blue taxi, he stepped to it quickly and opened the door. A man of about sixty years emerged gratefully. His cassock and the purple about his hat argued him a prelate of the Catholic Church. "Thank you so much ... No, I'm not hurt at all. I sat still because----"