ompanion's
account, and his pipe hanging idly from his hands showed that his
thoughts were active.

"Well, it might ha' bin," Halsey admitted, "but as I said afore, I'm
gettin' an old man, and I don't want no truck wi' things as I don't
unnerstan'. It give me the wust night as I've had since I had that bad
turn wi' the influenza ten year ago."

"You didn't see his face?"

"No."

"An' 'ee didn't mind you of anybody?"

Halsey hesitated.

"Well, onst I did think I'd seen one o' the same build--soomwhere. But I
can't recolleck where."

"As for the blood," said Betts reflectively, "it's as curous as the
coughin'. Did you iver hear tell as ghosts could bleed?"

Hastings shook his head. Steeped in meditation, the two men smoked
silently for a while. Then Betts said, with the explosiveness of one who
catches an idea,--

"Have yer thought o' tellin' John Dempsey?"

"I hain't thought o' tellin' nobody. An' I shouldn't ha' told Miss
Leighton what I did tell her, if she 'adn't come naggin' about my givin'
notice."

"You might as well tell John Dempsey. Why, it's his business, is old
Watson! Haven't yer seen 'im at all?"

Halsey said "No," holding his handsome old head rather high. Had he
belonged to a higher station in life, his natural reticence, and a
fastidious personal dignity would have carried him far. To a modern
statesman they are at least as valuable as brains. In the small world
of Ipscombe they only meant that Halsey himself held rather scornfully
aloof from the current village gossip, and got mocked at for his pains.
The ordinary human instinct revenged itself, however, when he was
_tete-a-tete_ with his old chum Peter Betts. Betts divined at any rate
from the expression in the old man's eyes that _he_ might talk, and
welcome.

So he poured out what he knew about John Dempsey, a Canadian lad working
in the Forestry Corps at Ralstone, who turned out to be the grandson of
the Dempsey who had always been suspected of the murder of Richard Watson
in the year 1859. This young Dempsey, he said, had meant to come to
Ipscombe after the war, and put what he knew before the police. But
finding himself sent to Ralstone, which was only five miles from
Ipscombe, he saw no reason to wait, and he had already given all the
information he could to the superintendent of police at Millsborough. His
grandfather had signed a written confession before his death, and John
Dempsey had handed it over. The old man, it appeared