ou! He always asked me the same questions. How long
I'd known you?--Why we got on together when we were so different?--silly
meaningless things--and he didn't listen to my answers. He was always
thinking of the next things to ask and that frightened me so."

The misery in Bunning's eyes grew deeper.

"Suddenly I thought I saw what was meant--that I was intended to take it
on myself. It made me warm all over, the though of it. . . . Now, I was
going to do something . . . that's how I saw it!"

"Going to do something . . ." he repeated desperately, with choking
sobs between the words. "It's all happened so quickly. He had just said
absently, not looking at me, 'You like Dune, don't you?'

"When I came out with it all at once---I said, 'Yes, I know, I know what
_you_ want. You think that Dune killed Carfax and that _I_ know he did,
but he didn't _I_ killed Carfax. . . .'"

Bunning's voice quite rang out. His eyes now desperately sought Olva's
face, as though he would find there something that would make the world
less black.

"I wasn't frightened---not then---that was the odd thing. The only thing
I thought about was saving you---getting you out of it. I didn't see! I
didn't see!"

"And then---what did Craven say?" Olva asked quietly.

"Craven said scarcely anything. He asked me whether I realized what I
was saying, whether I saw what I was in for? I said 'Yes'---that it had
all been too much for my conscience, that I had to tell some one---all
the things that you told me. Then he asked me why I'd done it. I told
him because Carfax always bullied me---he did, you know---and that one
day I couldn't stand it any longer and I met him in the wood and hit
him. He said, 'You must be very strong,' and of course I'm not, you
know, and that ought to have made me suspect something. But it didn't.
. . . Then he said he must think over what he ought to do, but all the
time he was saying it I knew he was thinking of something else and then
he went away."

"That was yesterday morning?"

"Yesterday morning, and all day I was terrified, but happy too. I
thought I'd done a big thing and I thought that the police would come
and carry me off. . . . Nothing happened all day. I sat there waiting.
And I thought of you---that you'd be able to marry Miss Craven and
would be very happy.

"Then, this morning, coming from chapel, Craven stopped me. I thought he
was going to tell me that he'd thought it his duty to give me away. He
woul