he must grip every one of these men here
by the throat and demand from each one separately an account of what he
thought and felt, what he surmised and what he guessed when standing
face to face with the weird enigma presented by that mutilated thing in
its rough deal case. He would have given worlds to know what his friend
Boatfield thought of it all, or what had been the petty constable's
conjectures.

A haunting and devilish desire seized him to break open the skulls of
all these yokels and to look into their brains. Above all now the
silence of the cottage close to him had become unendurable torment. That
closed door, the tiny railing which surrounded the bit of front garden,
that little gate the latch of which he himself so oft had lifted, all
seemed to hold the key to some terrible mystery, the answer to some
fearful riddle which he felt would drive him mad if he could not hit
upon it now at once.

The brandy had fired his veins: he no longer felt numb with the cold. A
passion of rage was seething in him, and he longed to attack with fists
and heels those curtained windows which now looked like eyes turned
mutely and inquiringly upon him.

But there was enough sanity in him yet to prevent his doing anything
rash: an uncontrolled act might cause astonishment, suspicion mayhap, in
the minds of those who witnessed it. He made a violent effort to steady
himself even now, above all to steady his voice and to veil that excited
glitter which he knew must be apparent in his eyes.

"Meseems that 'tis somewhat strange," he said quite calmly, even
lightly, to Squire Boatfield who seemed to be preparing to go, "that
these people--the Lamberts--who alone knew the ... the murdered man
intimately, should keep so persistently, so determinedly out of the
way."

Even while the words escaped his mouth--certes involuntarily--he knew
that the most elementary prudence should have dictated silence on this
score, and at this juncture. The man was about to be buried, the
disappearance of the smith had passed off so far without comment. Peace,
the eternal peace of the grave, would soon descend on the weird events
which occupied everyone's mind for the present.

What the old Quakeress thought and felt, what Richard--the
brother--feared and conjectured was easy for Sir Marmaduke to guess: for
him, but for no one else. To these others the silence of the cottage,
the absence of the Lamberts from this gathering was simple enough of
expl