The men looked at each other in some uncertainty.  After a moment Munn said, “All right, if it ain’t too much bother, Mrs. Brenner.”

“Not a bit,” she cried eagerly.  She bustled about, searching her meagre stock of chinaware for uncracked bowls.

“Set down?” suggested Mart.

Munn sat down with a sign, and his companions followed his example.  Mart resumed his position before the stove, lifting one foot into the capacious black maw of the oven.

“Must ‘a’ got your feet wet, Brenner?” the sheriff said with heavy jocularity.

Brenner nodded, “You bet I did,” he replied.  “Been down on the beach all afternoon.”

“Didn’t happen to hear any unusual noise down there, did you?” Munn spoke with his eyes on Mrs. Brenner, at her task of ladling out the thick soup.  She paused as though transfixed, her ladle poised in the air.

Munn’s eyes dropped from her face to the floor.  There they became fixed on the tracks of red clay.

“No, nothin’ but the sea.  It must be rough outside tonight, for the bay was whinin’ like a sick cat,” said Mart calmly.

“Didn’t hear a scream, or nothing like that, I suppose?” Munn persisted.

“Couldn’t hear a thing but the water.  Why?”

“Oh—­nothing,” said Munn.

Mrs. Brenner finished pouring out the soup and set the bowls on the table.

Chairs clattered, and soon the men were eating.  Mart finished his soup before the others and sat back smacking his lips.  As Munn finished the last spoonful in his bowl he pulled out a wicked-looking black pipe, crammed it full of tobacco and lighted it.

Blowing out a big blue breath of the pleasant smoke, he inquired, “Been any strangers around to-day?”

Mart scratched his head.  “Yeah.  A man come by early this afternoon.  He was aiming to climb the hill.  I told him he’d better wait till the sun come out.  I don’t know whether he did or not.”

“See anybody later—­say about half an hour ago?”

Mart shook his head.  “No.  I come up from the beach and I didn’t pass nobody.”

The sheriff pulled on his pipe for a moment.  “That boy of yours still catching butterflies?” he asked presently.

Mart scowled.  He swung out a long arm toward the walls with their floods of butterflies.  But he did not answer.

“Uh-huh!” said Munn, following the gesture with his quiet eyes.  He puffed several times before he spoke again.

“What time did you come in, Brenner, from the beach?”

Mrs. Brenner closed her hands tightly, the interlaced ringers locking themselves.

“Oh, about forty minutes ago, I guess it was.  Wasn’t it, Olga?” Mart said carelessly.

“Yes.”  Her voice was a breath.

“Was your boy out to-day?”

Mart looked at his wife.  “I dunno.”

Munn’s glance came to the wife.

“Yes.”

“How long ago did he come in?”