Mr. Carlton had pronounced the benediction, and a solemn hush still held all assembled, when a bicycle bell jarred staccato in the road; a moment later, with a sharp word for some children who had tired of the funeral and strayed across his path, the rider dismounted outside the saddler's workshop, a tiny cabin next his house and opposite the church. The cyclist was a lad in his teens, dark, handsome, dapper, but small for his age, which was that of high collars and fancy ties; and he rode a fancy bicycle, the high machine of the day, but extravagantly nickelled in all its parts. "Well, Fuller," said he, "who are they burying?" Fuller, the saddler, who enjoyed a local monopoly in the exercise of his craft, but whose trade was the mere relaxation of a life spent in reading and disseminating the news of the day, was spelling through the _Standard_ at his bench behind the open window. He dropped his paper and whipped the spectacles from a big dogmatic nose. "Gord love yer, Mr. Sidney, do you stand there and tell me you haven't heard?" "How could I hear when I'm only home from Saturdays to Mondays? I'm on my way home now. Old Sally Webb--is it--or one of the old Wilsons?" "No, sir," said the saddler; "that's no old person. Gord love yer," he cried again, "I wish that was!" "Who is it, Mr. Fuller?" "That's Molly Musk," said Fuller, slowly; "that's who that is, Mr. Sidney." The boy had not the average capacity for astonishment; he was not, in fact, the average boy; but at the name his eyebrows shot up and his mouth grew round. "Molly Musk! I thought nobody knew where she was? When did she turn up?" "Tuesday night, and died the next." "But I say, Fuller, this is interesting!" Perhaps the average boy would have been no more shocked; he might not even have found it interesting. This one leant his bicycle against the wall, and his elbows on the bench within the open window. "Where's she been all this time?" he queried, confidentially. "What did she die of? What's it all mean?" And there was a knowing curl about the corners of his mouth.