"Just look at them idiots!" rejoined Mr. Butterby, with marked composure, as if he had seen Richard Jones from the first, and expected the address. "So _you_ are back!" he added, turning his head sharply on the traveller. "I come in from Bromsgrove on my legs; missed the last train there," said Mr. Jones, rather addicted to a free-and-easy kind of grammar in private life: as indeed was the renowned gentleman he spoke to. "When I got past the last turning and see these here folks, I thought the world must be gone mad." "Did you come back on account of it?" asked Mr. Butterby. "Did they write for you?" "On account of what? As to writing for me, they'd be clever to do that, seeing I left 'em no address to write to. I have been going about from place to place; today there, tomorrow yonder." "On account of _that_," answered the detective, nodding his head in the direction of the grave, to which the men were then giving the last finishing strokes and treads of flattening. To Mr. Jones's ear there was something so obscure in the words that he only stared at their speaker, almost wondering whether the grave officer had condescended to a joke. "I don't understand you, sir." Mr. Butterby saw at once how the matter stood: that Dicky Jones--the familiar title mostly accorded him in the city--was ignorant of recent events. "The poor unfortunate man just put in there, Jones,"--with another nod to the grave--"was Mr. Ollivera, the counsel." "Mr. Ollivera!" exclaimed the startled Jones. "And he took his life away at your house." "Lawk a mercy!" cried Mr. Jones, repeating his favourite expression, one he was addicted to when overwhelmed with surprise. "Whatever did he do it for?" "Ah, that's just what we can't tell. Perhaps he didn't know himself what." "How was it, sir? Poison?" "Shot himself with his own pistol," briefly responded the officer. "And did it knowingly?--intentional?" "Intentional for sure, or he'd not have been put in here tonight. They couldn't have buried a dog with much less ceremony." "Well, I never knew such a thing as this," cried Mr. Jones, scarcely taking in the news yet. "When I went away Mr. Ollivera, hadn't come; he was expected; and my wife----Halloa!" The cause of the concluding exclamation was a new surprise, great as any the speaker had met with yet. Mr. Butterby, his keen eyes strained forward from their enclosed depths, touched him on the arm with authority to enjoin silence. The young woman--it would be no offence against taste to call her a lady, with her good looks, her good manners, her usually calm demeanour--whom Mr. Jones had recognized as his wife's sister, had come forward to the grave. Kneeling down, she bent her face in her hands, perhaps praying; then lifted it, rose, and seemed about to address the crowd. Her hands were clasped and raised before her; her bonnet had fallen back from her face and her bright flaxen hair. "It _is_ Alletha Rye, isn't it, sir?" he dubiously cried.