“For Mr. Short, sir,” said the impassive servant, not appearing to notice anything strange in the fact that his master was carrying the inanimate body of Mary Goddard.

“He is in there—­go in,” said Juxon hurriedly as he went on his way.

The detective and the vicar had already entered the room where the dead convict was lying.  All stood around the bed, gazing at his pale face as he lay.

“A telegram for Mr. Short,” said Holmes from the door.  John started and took the despatch from the butler’s hands.  He hastily tore it open, glanced at the contents and thrust it into his pocket.  Every one looked round.

“What is it, John?” whispered the vicar, who was nearest to him.

“Oh—­nothing.  I am first in the Tripos, that is all,” answered John very simply, as though it were not a matter of the least consequence.

Through all those months of untiring labour, through privation and anxiety, through days of weariness and nights of study, he had looked forward to the triumph, often doubting but never despairing.  But he had little guessed that the news of victory would reach him at such a moment.  It was nothing, he said; and indeed as he stood with the group of pale and awe-struck spectators by the dead man’s bed, he felt that the greatest thing which had ever happened to him was as nothing compared with the tragedy of which he had witnessed the last act.

It was all over.  There was nothing more to be said; the convict had escaped the law in the end, at the very moment when the hand of the law was upon him.  Thomas Reid, the conservative sexton, buried him “four by six by two,” grumbling at the parish depth as of yore, and a simple stone cross marked his nameless grave.  There it stands to this day in the churchyard of Billingsfield, Essex, in the shadow of the ancient abbey.

All these things happened a long time ago, according to Billingsfield reckoning, but the story of the tramp who attacked Squire Juxon and was pulled down by the bloodhound is still told by the villagers, and Mr. Gall, being once in good cheer, vaguely hinted that he knew who the tramp was; but from the singular reticence he has always shown in the matter, and from the prosperity which has attended his constabulary career, it may well be believed that he has a life interest in keeping his counsel.  Indeed as it is nearly ten years since Mr. Reid buried the poor tramp, it is possible that Mr. Gall’s memory may be already failing in regard to events which occurred at so remote a date.

It was but an incident, though it was perhaps the only incident of any interest which ever occurred in Billingsfield; but until it reached its termination it agitated the lives of the quiet people at the vicarage, at the cottage and at the Hall as violently as human nature can be moved.  It was long, too, before those who had witnessed the scene of Goddard’s death could shake off the impression of those awful