Mr. and Mrs. Bent were in their sitting-room, facing the sea, as many guests around them as the room could conveniently accommodate. Much excitement prevailed: every tongue was going. Upon the occasion of any unusual commotion at Greylands, the Dolphin, being the only inn in the place, was naturally made the centre point of the public, where expressions of marvel were freely given vent to and opinions exchanged. Since the disappearance of Anthony Castlemaine, no event had occurred to excite the people like unto this--the shooting himself of young Walter Dance. To the primitive community this affair seemed nearly as unaccountable as that. The bare fact of the pistol's having gone off through the young man's inadvertently knocking his elbow against that bit of projecting wall, sticking itself out in the corner of the chapel ruins, was nothing extraordinary; it might have happened to anybody; but the wonder manifested lay in the attendant circumstances. After the stir and bustle of seeing Walter Dance conveyed from the Grey Nunnery to his home had somewhat subsided, and the litter with its bearers, and the patient, and the doctor had fairly disappeared within doors, and they were barred out, the attendant spectators stayed a few minutes to digest the sight, and then moved off slowly by twos and threes to the Dolphin. The privileged among them went into Mr. and Mrs. Bent's room: the rest stayed outside. Marvel the first was, that young Dance should have gone out to shoot a bird at that uncanny hour of the morning; marvel the second was, that he should have chosen that haunted place, the chapel ruins, for nobody had evinced more fear in a silent way of the superstitions attending the Keep and the ghost that walked there than Walter Dance; marvel the third was, that he should have taken a pistol to shoot at the sea-bird, instead of a gun. "Why couldn't he have got the bird at eight or nine o'clock at night?" debated Ben Little, quite an old oracle in the village and the father of young Ben. "That's the best hour for them sea-birds: nobody in their senses would wait till a'most the dawn." "And look here," cried out Mrs. Bent shrilly: but she was obliged to be shrill to get a general hearing. "Why did he have a pistol with him? Tom Dance keeps a gun: he takes it out in his boat sometimes; but he keeps no pistol." "Young Walter said in the night, to me and the doctor, that it was his father's pistol when we asked him about it," interposed John Bent. "Rubbish!" returned the landlady. "I know better. Tom Dance never owned a pistol yet: how should he, and me not see it There's not a man in the whole place that keeps a pistol." "Except Mr. Superintendent Nettleby," put in old Ben.