it
to have been found?"

"We-el," said the witness, "'twas in the stacky mooad, 'twas through the
sarft stoof."

"But this soft mud would suck any solid body down, would it not?"
persisted the Coroner.

And the witness recalled the case of a duck that had been sucked into
the same soft pond mud the summer before, and cited the instance. He
forgot to add that on that occasion the mud had not been under water.

The Coroner accepted the instance. There can be no question that both he
and the jury were anxious to accept the easier explanation.

II

But I know perfectly well that the Wonder did not fall into the pond by
accident.

I should have known, even if that conclusive evidence with regard to his
being pushed into the mud had never come to light.

He may have stood by the ash-tree and looked into the water, but he
would never have fallen. He was too perfectly controlled; and, with all
his apparent abstraction, no one was ever more alive to the detail of
his surroundings. He and I have walked together perforce in many
slippery places, but I have never known him to fall or even begin to
lose his balance, whereas I have gone down many times.

Yes; I know that he was pushed into the pond, and I know that he was
held down in the mud, most probably by the aid of that ash stick I had
held. But it was not for me to throw suspicion on any one at that
inquest, and I preferred to keep my thoughts and my inferences to
myself. I should have done so, even if I had been in possession of
stronger evidence.

I hope that it was the Harrison idiot who was to blame. He was not
dangerous in the ordinary sense, but he might quite well have done the
thing in play--as he understood it. Only I cannot quite understand his
pushing the body down after it fell. That seems to argue
vindictiveness--and a logic which I can hardly attribute to the idiot.
Still, who can tell what went on in the distorted mind of that poor
creature? He is reported to have rescued the dead body of a rabbit from
the undergrowth on one occasion, and to have blubbered when he could not
bring it back to life.

There is but one other person who could have been implicated, and I
hesitate to name him in this place. Yet one remembers what terrific acts
of misapplied courage and ferocious brutality the fanatics of history
have been capable of performing when their creed and their authority
have been set at naught.

III

Ellen Mary never recovered her sanit