They were talking of Oliver October’s muddy shoes, of his strange behavior on the Lansing porch, of his unwillingness to allow the ditchers to go beyond a certain point in the swamp, of the rumor that Pete Hines had heard the violent quarrel between father and son, of the notebook found in the grass on the slope leading down into the slough, of the broken spade handle (they scowled with the thought of a blow forcible enough to splinter a stout hickory handle) and of the singular and significant fact that the heavy metal portion of the spade had never been found. Every group had its individual who professed to be able to explain away certain of these “discrepancies.” He had it from persons who were in a position to know, having been present or within hearing distance when, earlier in the evening, Oliver October had accounted to the sheriff and his men (in the presence of his lawyer) for some of the suspicious features of the case. These peregrinating individuals—assuming no responsibility and by no means vouching for Oliver’s veracity—informed their dubious hearers that Oliver remembered stepping into a puddle of mud and water back of Josiah Smith’s house, said puddle having been created by Josiah’s street sprinkling wagon which always occupied the same spot between sunset and daybreak and invariably leaked all over the unpaved alley (a claim substantiated by the town sprinkler, himself, who admitted that he left his wagon out there every night and that it did leak dreadfully up to the time he had it repaired, but who also said he was not to blame if people preferred to walk up an alley instead of on the sidewalk). And Oliver had a very good reason for stopping the ditchers where he did: he had inspected the slough out beyond and was convinced, as an expert, that it could only be reclaimed at a far greater cost than the land was worth or ever would be worth. Moreover, the son of old man Baxter unhesitatingly and emphatically had declared that it wasn’t his father’s body at all, and refused point blank to have anything to do with it. The word passed up and down Clay Street that three doctors, including young Doc Lansing, had examined the corpus delicti and pronounced it to be that of a man in his seventies.