m the ground.

"You saw him--thrown!" he exclaimed. "Thrown--down there? Impossible,
man!"

"Tell you I saw it!" asserted Varner doggedly. "I was looking at one
of those old tombs yonder--somebody wants some repairs doing--and the
jackdaws were making such a to-do up there by the roof I glanced up at
them. And I saw this man thrown through that door--fairly flung through
it! God!--do you think I could mistake my own eyes?"

"Did you see who flung him?" asked Bryce.

"No; I saw a hand--just for one second, as it might be--by the edge of
the doorway," answered Varner. "I was more for watching him! He sort
of tottered for a second on the step outside the door, turned over and
screamed--I can hear it now!--and crashed down on the flags beneath."

"How long since?" demanded Bryce.

"Five or six minutes," said Varner. "I rushed to him--I've been doing
what I could. But I saw it was no good, so I was running for help--"

Bryce pushed him towards the bushes by which they were standing.

"Take me to him," he said. "Come on!"

Varner turned back, making a way through the cypresses. He led Bryce to
the foot of the great wall of the nave. There in the corner formed by
the angle of nave and transept, on a broad pavement of flagstones, lay
the body of a man crumpled up in a curiously twisted position. And with
one glance, even before he reached it, Bryce knew what body it was--that
of the man who had come, shyly and furtively, to Ransford's door.

"Look!" exclaimed Varner, suddenly pointing. "He's stirring!"

Bryce, whose gaze was fastened on the twisted figure, saw a slight
movement which relaxed as suddenly as it had occurred. Then came
stillness. "That's the end!" he muttered. "The man's dead! I'll
guarantee that before I put a hand on him. Dead enough!" he went on, as
he reached the body and dropped on one knee by it. "His neck's broken."

The mason bent down and looked, half-curiously, half-fearfully, at the
dead man. Then he glanced upward--at the open door high above them in
the walls.

"It's a fearful drop, that, sir," he said. "And he came down with such
violence. You're sure it's over with him?"

"He died just as we came up," answered Bryce. "That movement we saw was
the last effort--involuntary, of course. Look here, Varner!--you'll have
to get help. You'd better fetch some of the cathedral people--some of
the vergers. No!" he broke off suddenly, as the low strains of an organ
came from within the great bui