"They are but a set of bumble-heads at the best," soliloquised Mr. Butterby, respectfully alluding to the twelve men who had returned the verdict, as he took a large bite out of his last piece of well-buttered pikelet. "Juries for the most part always are: if they have got any brains they send them a wool-gathering then. Hemming, the butter-and-cheese man, told me he did say something about insanity; and he was foreman, too; but the rest of 'em and the coroner wouldn't listen to it. It don't much matter, for he got the burial rites after all, poor fellow: but if I'd been them, I should have gave him the benefit of the doubt." Stopping in his observations to put the rest of the pikelet in his mouth, Mr. Butterby went on again as he ate it. "It might have been that, insanity; but as to the other suspicion, there's no grounds whatever for it on the face of things at present. If such is to be raised I shall have to set to work and hunt 'em up. Create 'em as it were. 'Don't spare money,' says that young clergyman last night when he sat here; 'your expenses shall be reimbursed to you with interest.' As if I could make a case out of nothing! I'm not a French Procureur-Imperial." Drinking down his tea at a draught, Mr. Butterby tried the teapot, lest a drop might be left in it still, turning it nearly upside down in the process. The result was, that the lid came open and a shower of tea-leaves descended on the tray. "Bother!" said Mr. Butterby, as he hastily set the teapot in its place, and went on with his arguments. "There's something odd about the case, though, straightforward as it seems; and I've thought so from the first. That girl's dream, for example, which _she_ says she had; and her conduct at the grave. It was curious that Dicky Jones should just be looking on at her," added Mr. Butterby, slightly diverging from the direct line of consecutive thought: "curious that Dicky should have come up then at all. First, Alletha Rye vows he didn't do it; and, next, the parson vows it, Reverend Ollivera. Kene, too--but he points to insanity; and now the young fellow, Francis Greatorex. Suppose I go over the case again?" Stretching out his hand, Mr. Butterby pulled the bell-rope--an old-fashioned twisted blue cord with a handle at the end; and a young servant came in. "Shut the shutters," said he. While this was in process, he took two candles from the mantelpiece, and lighted them. The girl went away with the tea-tray. He then unlocked his bureau, and from one of its pigeon-holes brought forth a few papers, memoranda, and the like, which he studied in silence, one after the other. "The parson's right," he began presently; "if there is a loophole it's where he said--that somebody got into the room after the departure of Mr. Greatorex. Let's sum the points up."