Arrived in the midst of this sterile wilderness, Ilam unceremoniously dropped his burden near a miniature mountain, which raised itself by the side of a miniature pit. He then found a spade, and, having tested the looseness of the soil, took up the black mystery and slipped it carefully into the pit. Then he climbed with the spade on to the summit of the hillock, and began to push the soil from the hillock into the pit. It proved to be the simplest thing in the world. In five minutes the burden of Ilam lay under several feet of soil. Carpentaria, favoured by the nature of the spot, had crept closer. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust!” he heard Ilam reciting. Amazing phenomenon! But nothing can be more amazing than the behaviour of an utterly respectable man when he is committing a crime! The affair finished, Ilam departed, passing within a few feet of Carpentaria, who stretched himself flat on the ground to avoid detection. And when Ilam had vanished out of sight, Carpentaria jumped up feverishly, seized the spade, leapt into the pit and began to dig--to dig with a fury of haste. Fate helped him, for the black mass was uncovered in less time than had been taken to cover it. He dragged it slowly out of the pit, and slowly, almost reluctantly, unwrapped it. He had been sure at the first touch that it was the body of a man, and he was not mistaken. In the gloomy night he could see the white patches made by the face and the hands. The body was not yet stiff. He hesitated, and then struck a match. He hoped the wind would blow it out, but the wind spared it; it flared bravely, and lighted the face of the corpse, and the corpse was that of the mysterious drunken man. A thousand unanswerable questions fought together for solution in Carpentaria’s brain. He knew himself to be in the presence of a crime, of a murder. His legal duty, therefore, was to fetch justice in the shape of a policeman. But he reflected that no battalion of policemen and judges could undo the crime, bring the dead to life, make innocent the guilty. He reflected also upon the clumsiness of State justice, and the inconveniences attaching to it, and upon the immeasurable harm its advent might do to the opening season of the City of Pleasure. Moreover, he had a horror of capital punishment, and he was a bold and original man, though an artist. He settled rapidly in his mind that he himself would probe the matter to its root, and that the justice involved should be the private justice of Carpentaria, not the public justice of the realm. And a few minutes later he had discovered a long, flat barrow, and was wheeling away the burden that had bent the back of Josephus Ilam. He brought it circuitously and gently by way of the Sports Fields round again to the Central Way, and so to the neighbourhood of his own house. The night had now grown darker than ever, and a few drops of rain began to fall.