In the churchyard, having taken up his station there behind an upright tombstone, where tombstones were thick, stood an officer connected with the police. He was in plain clothes--in fact, nobody remembered to have seen him in other ones--and had come out tonight not officially but to gratify himself personally. Ensconced behind the stone, away from everybody, he could look on at leisure through its upper fretwork and take his own observations, not only of the ceremony about to be performed, but of those who were attending it. He was a middle-sized, spare man, with a pale face, deeply sunk green eyes, that had a habit of looking steadily at people, and a small, sharp, turned-up nose. Silent by nature and by habit, he imparted the idea of possessing a vast amount of astute keenness as a detector of crime: in his own opinion he had not in that respect an equal. Nobody could discern him, and he did not intend they should. Amidst a dead silence, save for the creaking of the cords, amidst a shiver of sympathy, of pity, of awful thoughts from a great many of the spectators, the black covering was thrown aside and the coffin was lowered. There was a general lifting off of hats; a pause; and then a rush. One in the front rank--a fat woman, who had fought for her place--stepped forward in her irrepressible curiosity to take a last look inside the grave; another followed her; the movement was contagious, and there was a commotion. Upon which the men holding the torches swept them round; it threw out the flame rather dangerously, and the rushers drew back again with half a cry. Not quite all. A few, more adventurous than the rest, slipped round to the safer side, and were in time to read the inscription on the lid: "JOHN OLLIVERA. Aged 28." Short enough, and simple enough, for the sad death. Only a moment after the cords were drawn away did it remain visible; for the grave-diggers, flinging their torches aside, threw in the earth, spadeful upon spadeful, and covered it up from sight. The shallow grave was soon filled in; the grave-diggers flattened it down level with spades and feet: no ceremony accorded, you see, to such an end as this poor man had made. Before it was quite accomplished, those officially connected with the burial, or with the buried, left the ground and departed. Not so the mob of people: they stayed to see the last; and would have stayed had it been until morning light. And they talked freely now, one with another, but were orderly and subdued still. Mr. Jones stayed. He had not mixed with the people, but stood apart in the churchyard, under the shade of the great yew-tree. Soon he began to move away, and came unexpectedly upon the detective officer standing yet behind the gravestone. Mr. Jones halted in surprise. "Halloo!" cried he. "Mr. Butterby!"