t heavy, can't keep my eyes to it. But I've walked miles--often and
often--to see a stone or a hill, don't yer know, and Sannet Wood's one
o' the best. So, says I, when I hear about young Carfax bein' done
for right there at the very place, I says to myself, 'You may look and
look--hold your old inquests--collar your likely feller--but it wasn't a
man that did it, and you'll have to go further than human beings if you
fix on the culprit.'"

This was, in all probability, the longest speech that Lawrence had ever
made in his life. He himself seemed to think so, for he added in short
jerks: "It was those old Druids--got sick--o' the sight--o' Carfax's
dirty body--bangin' about in their preserves--an' they gave him a chuck
under the chin," and after that there was silence.

To Olva the effect of this was uncanny. He played, it seemed, a
spiritual Blind Man's Buff. On every side of him things filled the air;
once and again he would touch them, sometimes he would fancy that he was
alone, clear, isolated, when suddenly something again would blunder up
against him. And always with him, driving him into the bustle of his
fellow men, flinging him, hurling him from one noise to another noise,
was the terror of silence. Let him once be alone, once waiting in
suspense, and he would hear. . . . What would he hear?

He felt a sudden impulse to speak.

"Do you know, Lawrence, in a kind of way I feel with you. I mean
this--that if--I had, at any time, committed a murder or were indeed
burdened by any tremendous breaking of a law, I believe it would be the
consciousness of the Maker of the law that would pursue me. It sounds
priggish, but I don't mean man. The laws that man has made
nothing--subject to any temporary civilization, mere fences put up for a
moment to keep the cattle in their proper fields. But the laws that God
made--if you break one . . ."

Lawrence tuned heavily in his chair.

"Then you believe in God?"

"Yes, I believe in God."

After that there was silence. Both men felt uncomfortable. Led by some
sudden, ungovernable impulse, they had both gone further than their
slight acquaintance justified. Olva was convinced that he had made a
fool of himself, that he had talked like a prig. Lawrence was groping
hopelessly amongst a forest of dark thought for some little sensible
thing that he might say. He found nothing and so relapsed, with false,
uncomfortable easiness, into--

"I say, old man, have a drink."

The r