"Your eyes be enough," she said. "You cast 'em to the ceiling, an' search the floor an' the fire with 'em; but you can't hide the guilt in 'em--you evil-speaking traitor! He'd have me dead--what d'you think of that, Sarah Jane? As a wife you can understand, perhaps. Every word I caught when I was in the garden--doing his work, of course, and picking the lettuces that he'd ought to have picked and washed and packed two hours afore. An' him t'other side of the wall telling to that wind-bag that teaches the children--though what he does teach 'em except to use long, silly words, I can't say. 'The sooner she's dead the better!' That was the thing my husband spoke--in a murdering voice he spoke it. And my knees curdled away under me--the Lord's my judge! I could almost hear him sharpening a knife to do it! 'The sooner she's dead the better.' That was what he said. Murder, I call it--black murder; and he'll hang in the next world for it, if he don't in this. Wished me dead! Knave--foul-minded rascal!--beastly coward to kill the wife of his bosom with a word! And now----" The familiar gasp for which her husband waited came, and he spoke before she could resume. "I'll only say this. I was speaking of Adam Churchward's old collie bitch--may I be stuck fast on to this settle for evermore if I wasn't; and when I said 'sooner she's dead the better,' 'twas in answer to schoolmaster's question. If I was struck dumb this instant moment, that's the truth." "Truth--you grey and godless lump of horror! Truth--who be you to talk of truth? After this the very word 'truth' did ought to rust your tongue black and choke you! Not a word of that will I believe. 'Twas me you meant; an' when I heard it, I tell you the sky went round like a wheel. I catched hold of a clothes-post to stop myself from falling in a heap. And now if cherubims in a flaming, fiery chariot come down for me from heaven, I wouldn't go. Nothing would take me--I'd defy death for my indignation! I'll see you out yet, you wife-murderer, you vagabond, you cut-throat dog of a man--ess fay, I'll see you out if I've got to wait twenty thousand years to do it!' "Here," said Jarratt Weekes to Daniel Brendon, "me and you will get from this. When she lets go, you might as well try to put in a word with a hurricane as with her." "All the same, it was Churchward's old worn-out dog, as he'll testify to," said Philip. "The creature's suffering, and she'll be killed to-morrow morn; an' that's evidence for anybody who's got a level mind and no grudge against me. Be it sense or reason that I'd say a thing like that to a neighbour--even if I thought it?" "How you can sit there with your owl's eyes a-glaring----" began Mrs. Weekes--then Daniel followed Jarratt. "I'll come back along for you presently," he said to Sarah Jane. "You stop here till we're home from the committee." A moment later he explained his purpose, and Weekes raised no objection.