The doctor was smoking his after-supper pipe when Abner arrived. The Hinds were good patients, and he did not hesitate to turn out. ‘Give me a hand with the mare,’ he said, and they went out into the stable to put to. The doctor’s wife had warmed his overcoat and wrapped a muffler round his neck. He gave Abner a peg of whisky to keep him warm. When they were clear of the Lesswardine lights he asked for details of the affair. ‘By Gad, that’s serious,’ he said. ‘That means an inquest and a P.M.’ He thought to himself: ‘Two guineas,’ and touched up the mare with satisfaction. ‘You say Bastard and George Malpas went down together? He was struggling with George?’ ‘Yes—it was me and Badger he was after.’ ‘That’s beside the point,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s a bad lookout for Malpas—and for his mother, poor old lady! A bad lookout. . . . It’s homicide—manslaughter.’ The Fourteenth Chapter BY the time that Abner and the doctor reached Mainstone, Bastard’s body was growing cold, and the last hope that his unconsciousness was any less than that of death had vanished. The Pound House was still full of those who waited for the verdict, a silent, sober company. Mr Hind, who had not seen the beginning of the struggle, tried vainly to find out what had happened. All accounts of it were confused and contradictory, and in any case it mattered little to the landlord, for he knew that his house was already in the black books of the police, and felt sure that this catastrophe would mean the loss of his licence. The doctor scarcely needed to look at Bastard’s body. ‘Yes, fractured base,’ he said. ‘He must have died at once. An elderly man with brittle bones. There’s nothing to be done, Hind. I’ll knock up the sergeant when I get back to Lesswardine and telephone the coroner.’ ‘I wouldn’t have had this happen for nothing, doctor!’ moaned Mr Hind. ‘Of course you wouldn’t. It’s not your fault.’ ‘He must have tripped over that chair.’ And everybody, including the doctor, stared at the offending piece of furniture with interest. ‘Come on, Abner,’ said George Malpas. ‘Good-night, Mr Hind.’ Mr Hind did not reply. All through that night the snow fell slowly, incessantly. The soft, frozen sky drifted downward idly on the land, and George and Abner had to pick their way back to Wolfpits blindly in the small hours, guided through the plain by the presence of ghostly trees and in the Wolfpits valley by the snow-muffled tumult of the Folly Brook. The hills were desolate and savage. They lay dead, and the sky covered them. Wolfpits itself rose before the travellers’ eyes sudden and black through the falling snow. There was no light in any of the windows, for Mary had given them up long ago and gone to bed. Wood embers smouldered in the kitchen grate. George poked them into a blaze. They took off their snow-plastered coats and sat in front of the fire.