Dr. William Henry Timms meanwhile conversed apart with his panel. He was a middle-aged, shrewdfaced man, who, like so many thousands of other Whig babes born in the forties, had been named after the hero of Tippecanoe. He was more politician than coroner, more coroner than doctor. He hung by a rather dubious diploma upon the outskirts of his profession, snubbed by the County Society, contemned by most sensible Thessaly families as “not fit to doctor a sick cat.” But he had a powerful “pull” in the politics of the county, and the office could not, apparently, be wrested from him, no matter how capable his opponent. In the earlier years of his official service he had been over zealous in suspecting mysteries, and had twice been reprimanded by the Supreme Court Judge, and much oftener by the District Attorney, for enveloping in criminal suspicion cases which, when intelligently examined, were palpable and blameless casualties. These experiences had sensibly modified his zeal. He had put the detective habit of mind far away behind him, and, like a wise official, bent all his energies now to the more practical labor of dividing each inquest into as many sessions as possible. Had he been a Federal Deputy Marshal, he could not have been more skilled in this delicate art of getting eight days’ pay out of a three hours’ case. A bare suggestion of mystery at the start, to be almost cleared up, then revived, then exploited carefully, then finally dissipated, and all so deftly that the District Attorney, who lived at Octavius, would not be inspired to come over and interfere--this was Dr. Timms’ conception of a satisfactory inquest. Occasionally there would be the added zest of an opportunity to formally inflict censure upon somebody, and if this involved some wealthy or potential person, so much the better: to withhold the censure meant tangible profit, to sternly mete it (failing a fair arrangement) meant public credit as a bold, vigilant official. Dr. Timms was still turning over in his mind the professional possibilities involved in Tallman’s bad fence-building, and casually sounding his jurors as to their private feelings toward the delinquent; the brothers had followed the jury up to the meadow plateau, and were standing aloof from yet among their neighbors, answering in monosyllables, and following mentally the work of the undertakers’ squad down in the bottom; the farmers were beginning to straggle off reluctantly, the demands of neglected work and long-waiting dinners conquering their inclination to remain--when a big carry-all from Tyre drove up on the road outside, and a score of men clambered out and over the fence to join the group. They had driven post-haste from the Convention, and among them were Ansdell, Beekman, and Milton Squires.