ew
it by a scratch on the inner plate, and by other signs. The bunch of
keys belonged to her: two of them fitted the locks of her two boxes.

Mr. Flooks, agent to Lord Claydonfield at Chettlewood, said that Mr.
Manston had pleaded as his excuse for leaving him rather early in the
evening after their day's business had been settled, that he was going
to meet his wife at Carriford Road Station, where she was coming by the
last train that night.

The surgeon said that the remains were those of a human being. The small
fragment seemed a portion of one of the lumbar vertebrae--the other
the head of the os femoris--but they were both so far gone that it was
impossible to say definitely whether they belonged to the body of a male
or female. There was no moral doubt that they were a woman's. He did
not believe that death resulted from burning by fire. He thought she was
crushed by the fall of the west gable, which being of wood, as well as
the floor, burnt after it had fallen, and consumed the body with it.

Two or three additional witnesses gave unimportant testimony.

The coroner summed up, and the jury without hesitation found that the
deceased Mrs. Manston came by her death accidentally through the burning
of the Three Tranters Inn.

3. DECEMBER THE SECOND. AFTERNOON

When Mr. Springrove came from the door of the Rising Sun at the end of
the inquiry, Manston walked by his side as far as the stile to the park,
a distance of about a stone's-throw.

'Ah, Mr. Springrove, this is a sad affair for everybody concerned.'

'Everybody,' said the old farmer, with deep sadness, ''tis quite a
misery to me. I hardly know how I shall live through each day as it
breaks. I think of the words, "In the morning thou shalt say, Would God
it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for
the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of
thine eyes which thou shalt see."' His voice became broken.

'Ah--true. I read Deuteronomy myself,' said Manston.

'But my loss is as nothing to yours,' the farmer continued.

'Nothing; but I can commiserate you. I should be worse than unfeeling
if I didn't, although my own affliction is of so sad and solemn a kind.
Indeed my own loss makes me more keenly alive to yours, different in
nature as it is.'

'What sum do you think would be required of me to put the houses in
place again?'

'I have roughly thought six or seven hundred pounds.'

'If the letter