“We’re all thinking of the same thing,” he began. “It’s the old Squire who will soon be lyin’ dead, how he never went out of the place for seventy long years--as long as I can remember. Why? Because there was a man murdered and a woman died. Who was the man murdered? The Squire’s brother-in-law. Who murdered him? John Dunning, they said. John Dunning, he was tried and he got off and he went away. Who murdered that man? John Dunning didn’t. Why? Because John Dunning didn’t go to the wood for two hours afterwards. Who murdered that man, I say?” At this point he accepted the hospitality of the proffered glass of beer. “I know who done it. I always have known. Nobody knows but me. I’ve known for all these years; and I’ve never told. For why? He would ha’ killed me, too. For certain sure he would ha’ killed me. Who was it, then? I’ll tell you. It was the man that lies a-dyin’ over there. It was the Squire himself--that’s who it was. No one else was in the wood all the morning but the Squire and the other gentleman. I say, the Squire done it; the Squire and nobody else. The Squire done it. The Squire done it.” The men looked at each other in amazement. Then the blacksmith rose, and he said solemnly: “Thomas, you’re close on eighty years of age. You’ve gone silly in your old age. You and your Squire! I remember what my father said, ‘The Squire, he left Mr. Holme at the wood and turned back.’ That was the evidence at the Inquest and the Trial. You and your Squire! Go home, Thomas, and go to bed and get your memory back again.” Thomas looked round the room again. The faces of all were hard and unsympathetic. He turned and hobbled out. The days that followed were few and evil, for he could speak about nothing else, and no one heeded his garrulous utterances. Assuredly, if there had been a lunatic asylum in the village he would have been enclosed there. A fatal example of the mischief of withholding evidence! Now, had this boy made it clear at the inquest that the two gentlemen were together in the wood for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, one knows not what might have followed. Thomas did not go home. He turned his steps in the direction of the Hall, and he hobbled along with a purpose in his face. His revelation had been received with scorn and derision. Perhaps in another place it would be received with more respect. * * * * * The housekeeper met Leonard and Constance at the open door. It had stood open all day, as if for the admission of the guest whose wings were hovering very near. “He’s in the library,” said the woman, with the corner of her apron brushing away the tears with which women-servants always meet the approach of Azrael. “I wanted him to go upstairs and to bed, but he takes no notice. He’s been in the library nearly all day.” “Did he go out this morning after breakfast?”