Mr. Ansdell came straight to the two brothers, giving a hand to each with a gesture full of tender comprehension. While they talked in low tones of the tragedy, they were joined by Abe Beekman; upon the normal eagerness and wistful solemnity of his gaunt face there was engrafted now a curious suggestion of consuming interest in some masked feature of the affair. He was so intent upon this, whatever it might be, that to the sensitive feelings of the other three he seemed to dash into the subject with wanton brusqueness. “How air yeh, Fairchild?” he nodded to John, “I want somebody to tell me this hull thing, while it’s fresh. Who knaows th’ most ’baout it? Where’s th’ Cor’ner? What’s he done so far?” Obedient to a word from John, the Coroner dignifiedly came over to the beech tree, where our little group stood, and listened coldly to a series of searching questions put by the Jay County magnate. When they were finished he made lofty answer: “I ain’t institooted no inquiries yit. That’ll be arranged fur later, to convenience the family ’n’ the officers of the law. It ain’t customary, in cases of accident like this, to rush around like a hen with her head cut off, right at the start. The law takes these things ca’mly, sir--ca’mly ’n’ quietly.” “But have you made an examination?--you are a doctor, I think,” interposed Ansdell. “Have you satisfied yourself when the death occurred? Have you learned any of the circumstances of it? Were there any witnesses?” The Coroner looked at the questioner, then at the brothers, as if including them in his pained censure, then back again at Ansdell: “I don’t know ez it’s any o’ _your_ business,” he said. “Who _air_ yeh, any way?” Before anyone else could answer, Beekman spoke: “He’s the next Congressman from this deestrick--nominated by acclamation over at Tyre to-day--that’s who _he_ is. But never mind that, what I want to knaow is--air yeh sure he died from an accident? Kin yeh swear to thet ez a doctor?” “Toe be sure I kin!” responded the official, in a friendlier tone. “He was simply mashed out o’ shape by the fall. He come down forty feet, ef it was an inch, plum under the horses. They jest rolled over each other, all the way down.--And so this is Mr. Ansdell, I presewm. I’m proud to make yer acquaintance, sir. Only by the merest accident I wasn’t at the Convention to-day, sir.” The undertaker came up now to announce that the first stage of his labors was completed and that the ambulance wagon was on the road outside, ready to start for the Fairchild homestead. “We went up by t’other side, lower daown the gulf,” he explained; “’twas easier, ’n’ then there was no shock to yer feelin’s. Ef I might be ’lowed to s’jest, it ’ud look kine o’ respectful to hev all these friends of the remains walk two by two, behine the wagon, daown to the haouse. Yeh might let the carry-all come along arterwards, empty, yeh knaow, ez a sort o’ token of grief.”