s
to be held in a long room attached to the inn, ordinarily devoted, as
its various appurtenances testified, to gatherings of a more convivial
character.

Hither I betook myself after a protracted lunch and a meditative pipe,
and being the first to arrive--the jury having already been sworn and
conducted to the mortuary to view the remains--whiled away the time by
considering the habits of the customary occupants of the room by the
light of the objects contained in it. A wooden target with one or two
darts sticking in it hung on the end wall and invited the Robin Hoods
of the village to try their skill; a system of incised marks on the
oaken table made sinister suggestions of shove-halfpenny; and a large
open box filled with white wigs, gaudily colored robes and wooden
spears, swords and regalia, crudely coated with gilded paper, obviously
appertained to the puerile ceremonials of the Order of Druids.

I had exhausted the interest of these relics and had transferred my
attentions to the picture gallery when the other spectators and the
witnesses began to arrive. Hastily I seated myself in the only
comfortable chair beside the one placed at the head of the table,
presumably for the coroner; and I had hardly done so when the latter
entered accompanied by the jury. Immediately after them came the
sergeant, Inspector Badger, one or two plain-clothes men, and finally
the divisional surgeon.

The coroner took his seat at the head of the table and opened his book,
and the jury seated themselves on a couple of benches on one side of
the long table.

I looked with some interest at the twelve "good men and true." They
were a representative group of British tradesmen, quiet, attentive, and
rather solemn; but my attention was particularly attracted by a small
man with a very large head and a shock of upstanding hair whom I had
diagnosed, after a glance at his intelligent but truculent countenance
and the shiny knees of his trousers, as the village cobbler. He sat
between the broad-shouldered foreman, who looked like a blacksmith, and
a dogged, red-faced man whose general aspect of prosperous greasiness
suggested the calling of a butcher.

"The inquiry, gentlemen," the coroner commenced, "upon which we are now
entering concerns itself with two questions. The first is that of
identity: who was this person whose body we have just viewed? The
second is: How, when, and by what means did he come by his death? We
will take