t all. She blamed herself for
what had happened, and only herself. I had it from her own lips."

"You had it from her lips that I had NOT ill-treated her; and at the
same time another had it from her lips that I HAD ill-treated her? My
mother was no impulsive woman who changed her opinion every hour without
reason. How can it be, Venn, that she should have told such different
stories in close succession?"

"I cannot say. It is certainly odd, when she had forgiven you, and had
forgiven your wife, and was going to see ye on purpose to make friends."

"If there was one thing wanting to bewilder me it was this
incomprehensible thing!... Diggory, if we, who remain alive, were only
allowed to hold conversation with the dead--just once, a bare minute,
even through a screen of iron bars, as with persons in prison--what we
might learn! How many who now ride smiling would hide their heads! And
this mystery--I should then be at the bottom of it at once. But the
grave has forever shut her in; and how shall it be found out now?"

No reply was returned by his companion, since none could be given; and
when Venn left, a few minutes later, Clym had passed from the dullness
of sorrow to the fluctuation of carking incertitude.

He continued in the same state all the afternoon. A bed was made up for
him in the same house by a neighbour, that he might not have to return
again the next day; and when he retired to rest in the deserted place it
was only to remain awake hour after hour thinking the same thoughts. How
to discover a solution to this riddle of death seemed a query of more
importance than highest problems of the living. There was housed in his
memory a vivid picture of the face of a little boy as he entered the
hovel where Clym's mother lay. The round eyes, eager gaze, the piping
voice which enunciated the words, had operated like stilettos on his
brain.

A visit to the boy suggested itself as a means of gleaning new
particulars; though it might be quite unproductive. To probe a child's
mind after the lapse of six weeks, not for facts which the child had
seen and understood, but to get at those which were in their nature
beyond him, did not promise much; yet when every obvious channel is
blocked we grope towards the small and obscure. There was nothing else
left to do; after that he would allow the enigma to drop into the abyss
of undiscoverable things.

It was about daybreak when he had reached this decision, and he at once