About a quarter-past ten o’clock on that evening the early-retiring inhabitants of the hamlet were roused from their slumbers by a loud, continuous knocking at the front door of Armstrong’s house:  louder and louder, more and more vehement and impatient, resounded the blows upon the stillness of the night, till the soundest sleepers were awakened.  Windows were hastily thrown open, and presently numerous footsteps approached the scene of growing hubbub.  The unwonted noise was caused, it was found, by Farmer Armstrong, who accompanied by his wife, was thundering vehemently upon the door with a heavy black-thorn stick.  Still no answer was obtained.  Mrs. Strugnell, it was supposed, had not returned from town; but where was Mr. Wilson, who was almost always at home both day and night?  Presently a lad called out that a white sheet or cloth of some sort was hanging out of one of the back windows.  This announcement, confirming the vague apprehensions which had begun to germinate in the wise heads of the villagers, disposed them to adopt a more effectual mode of obtaining admission than knocking seemed likely to prove.  Johnson, the constable of the parish, a man of great shrewdness, at once proposed to break in the door.  Armstrong, who, as well as his wife, was deadly pale, and trembling violently, either with cold or agitation, hesitatingly consented, and crowbars being speedily procured, an entrance was forced, and in rushed a score of excited men.  Armstrong’s wife, it was afterwards remembered, caught hold of her husband’s arm in a hurried, frightened manner, whispered hastily in his ear, and then both followed into the house.

“Now, farmer,” cried Johnson, as soon as he had procured a light, “lead the way up stairs.”

Armstrong, who appeared to have somewhat recovered from his panic, darted at once up the staircase, followed by the whole body of rustics.  On reaching the landing-place, he knocked at Mr. Wilson’s bedroom door.  No answer was returned.  Armstrong seemed to hesitate, but the constable at once lifted the latch; they entered, and then a melancholy spectacle presented itself.

Wilson, completely dressed, lay extended on the floor a lifeless corpse.  He had been stabbed in two places in the breast with some sharp-pointed instrument.  Life was quite extinct.  The window was open.  On farther inspection, several bundles containing many of Wilson’s valuables in jewelry and plate, together with clothes, shirts, silk handkerchiefs, were found.  The wardrobe and a secretary-bureau had been forced open.  The assassins had, it seemed, been disturbed, and had hurried off by the window without their plunder.  A hat was also picked up in the room, a shiny, black hat, much too small for the deceased.  The constable snatched it up, and attempted to clap it on Armstrong’s head, but it was not nearly large enough.  This, together with the bundles, dissipated a suspicion which had been growing in Johnson’s mind, and he roughly exclaimed, “You need not look so scared, farmer; it’s not you:  that’s quite clear.”