HAPTER XXXIII

THE DAY AFTER

The feeling which prevailed in Thanet with regard to the murder of the
mysterious foreigner on the sands of Epple Bay was chiefly one of sullen
resentment.

Here was a man who had come from goodness knows where, whose strange
wanderings and secret appearances in the neighborhood had oft roused the
anger of the village folk, just as his fantastic clothes, his silken
doublet and befrilled shirt had excited their scorn; here was a man, I
say, who came from nowhere, and now he chose--the yokels of the
neighborhood declared it that he chose--to make his exit from the world
in as weird a manner as he had effected his entrance into this remote
and law-abiding little island.

The farmhands and laborers who dwelt in the cottages dotted about around
St. Nicholas-at-Wade, Epple or Acol were really angry with the stranger
for allowing himself to be murdered on their shores. Thanet itself had
up to now enjoyed a fair reputation for orderliness and temperance, and
that one of her inhabitants should have been tempted to do away with
that interloping foreigner in such a violent manner was obviously the
fault of that foreigner himself.

The watches had found him on the sands at low tide. One of them walking
along the brow of the cliff had seen the dark object lying prone amongst
the boulders, a black mass in the midst of the whiteness of the chalk.

The whole thing was shocking, no doubt, gruesome in the extreme, but the
mystery which surrounded this strange death had roused ire rather than
horror.

Of course the news had traveled slowly from cottage to cottage, although
Petty Constable Pyot, who resided at St. Nicholas, had immediately
apprised Squire Boatfield and Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse of the awesome
discovery made by the watches on the sands of Epple Bay.

Squire Boatfield was major-general of the district and rode over from
Sarre directly he heard the news. The body in the meanwhile had been
placed under the shelter of one of the titanic caves which giant hands
have carved in the acclivities of the chalk. Squire Boatfield ordered it
to be removed. It was not fitting that birds of prey should be allowed
to peck at the dead, nor that some unusually high tide should once more
carry him out to sea, ere his murderer had been brought to justice.

Therefore, the foreigner with the high-sounding name was conveyed by the
watches at the squire's bidding to the cottage of the Lamberts over at
Acol