o,
looking right and left, up and down. There wasn't a soul in
sight--nobody! But--he slunk off--sneaked off--same as a fox sneaks away
from a farm-yard. He went down the side of the curtain-wall that shuts in
the ruins, taking as much cover as ever he could find--at the end of the
wall, he popped into the wood that stands between the ruins and his
house. And then, of course, I lost all sight of him."

"And--Mr. Oliver?" said Copplestone. "Did you see him again?"

Spurge took a pull at his rum and water, and relighted his pipe.

"I did not," he answered. "I was there until a quarter-past three--then I
went away. And no Oliver had come out o' that door when I left."

CHAPTER X

THE INVALID CURATE

Spurge and his visitor sat staring at each other in silence for a few
minutes; the silence was eventually broken by Copplestone.

"Of course," he said reflectively, "if Mr. Oliver was looking round those
ruins he could easily spend half an hour there."

"Just so," agreed Spurge. "He could spend an hour. If so be as he was one
of these here antiquarian-minded gents, as loves to potter about old
places like that, he could spend two hours, three hours, profitable-like.
But he'd have come out in the end, and the evidence is, guv'nor, that he
never did come out! Even if I am just now lying up, as it were, I'm fully
what they term o-fay with matters, and, by all accounts, after Bassett
Oliver went up that there path, subsequent to his bit of talk with
Ewbank, he was never seen no more 'cepting by me, and possibly by Squire
Greyle. Them as lives a good deal alone, like me guv'nor, develops what
you may call logical faculties--they thinks--and thinks deep. I've
thought. B.O.--that's Oliver--didn't go back by the way he'd come, or
he'd ha' been seen. B.O. didn't go forward or through the woods to the
headlands, or he'd ha' been seen, B.O. didn't go down to the shore, or
he'd ha' been seen. 'Twixt you and me, guv'nor, B.O.'s dead body is in
that there Keep!"

"Are you suggesting anything?" asked Copplestone.

"Nothing, guv'nor--no more than that," answered Spurge. "I'm making no
suggestion and no accusation against nobody. I've seen a bit too much of
life to do that. I've known more than one innocent man hanged there at
Norcaster Gaol in my time all through what they call circumstantial
evidence. Appearances is all very well--but appearances may be against a
man to the very last degree, and yet him be as innocent as a