annot deny that everything points
to the man. Surely no one else could have cut short so useful a life,
for certainly no ordinary degree of hatred would drive a man, however
brutal his nature, to commit such a crime, and to run the risk of
hanging for it. Let us take a brisk walk in the garden for an hour--that
will be the best thing for you. I will stop with you until the inquest
is over, and then you had better come over and have lunch with us."

"Thank you; I cannot do so," Mark said, "though I should like to. In the
first place, Millicent will come downstairs this afternoon, and I should
like to be in to meet her. Had it not been for that I might have come,
as I can walk across the fields to the Rectory without passing through
the village. There is another reason. I sent up yesterday by the coach
a letter to be delivered at once by hand, and I expect a detective down
here by one o'clock. I don't know that he will do any good; but at
the same time it will give me something to do, and at present there is
nothing I dread so much as sitting alone. Fortunately, yesterday evening
Millicent went to bed at five o'clock, and Mrs. Cunningham sat with me
all the evening, and her talk did me a great deal of good."

The inquest occupied a very short time, the only point on which many
questions were asked being as to the firing through the window. Mark
stated that it was already so dark that although he was within fifty
yards of the man when he mounted and rode off, he could not give any
very distinct description of his figure. It struck him as being that of
a man of medium height.

"You have made out that the bullet was intended for pour father?"

"I cannot say that, sir, it went between his head and that of Mr.
Bastow, but it might have been meant for either."

"Was your father impressed with the idea that it was an attempt to
murder him?"

"He naturally thought so. Mr. Bastow can assuredly have no enemies,
while my father, as a magistrate, may have made some. He certainly
thought it was an attempt to murder him, and was so impressed by the
fact that when we went to the library later on he went into certain
family matters with me that he had never communicated before, and which,
had it not been for this, he would not have entered into for some years
to come."

"He had his opinion, then, as to who was his assailant?"

"He had, sir, but as it was but an opinion, although there were
several facts that seemed to justify th