"My dear Wyllard, what a question for a clever man to ask!" exclaimed the lawyer, with a shade of contempt. "To speculate upon the motive I must have some knowledge of the man, and of this girl's murderer I know nothing. If I could once find the man, I should soon find the motive. Such a murder as this generally means the breaking of some legal tie that has become onerous--some bond which death alone can loosen." CHAPTER IV. BOTHWELL DECLINES TO ANSWER. The room at the Vital Spark was filled to overflowing on the occasion of the adjourned inquiry. At the previous examination only the inhabitants of Bodmin and its immediate neighbourhood had been present; but on this second afternoon people had come from long distances, and there was not standing room for the audience, which filled the passage, and waited with strained ears to catch a stray word now and then through the open door. The idea of a profound mystery--of a dastardly crime--had been fostered in the local mind by the newspapers, which had harped upon the ghastly theme, and gloated over the particulars of the nameless girl's fate in paragraphs and leaderettes _ad nauseam_. Articles headed "More details concerning the Bodmin Mystery," "Further particulars about the strange death on the railway," had served as the salt to give savour to cut and dried reports about the harvest, the markets, and those small offenders whose peccadilloes furnish the material for Justice to exercise her might upon at petty sessions. Every one had read about that strange death of a lonely girl in the summer sunset. Every one was interested in a fate so melancholy--an abandonment so inexplicable. "I thought that there was hardly ever a human being so isolated as to be owned by no one," said the curate of Wadebridge. "Yet it would seem that this poor girl had no one to care for her in life, or to identify her after death. If she had one friend living in England or France, surely that person must have made some sign before now." "People in France are very slow to hear about anything that happens in England," replied Dr. Menheniot, to whom the curate had been talking. "But I heard Mr. Heathcote, at the first inquiry, say that he meant to advertise in a Parisian newspaper." "Then be sure the advertisement appeared," answered Menheniot. "Heathcote is one of those few men with whom meaning and doing are the same thing." The inquiry dragged its slow length along, and hardly one new fact was elicited. There was a great deal of repetition, in spite of the Coroner's attempt to keep all his witnesses to the point. Mr. Distin sat near the Coroner, and asked a few questions of two or three of the witnesses; and though he elicited no actually new facts, he seemed to put things in a clearer light by his cross-examination. Just before the close of the inquiry, he said: "I see Mr. Grahame, of Penmorval, is here this afternoon. I should like to ask him a question or two, if you have no objection."