The man next him grimaced, and took his pipe out of his mouth a moment.

“She won’t be able to do nothin’ for ’im!  There isn’t a man nor boy in this ’ere place as didn’t know as ee hated Westall like pison, and would be as like as not to do for ’im some day.  That’ll count agen ’im now terrible strong!  Ee wor allus one to blab, ee wor.”

“Well, an’ Westall said jus’ as much!” struck in another voice; “theer wor sure to be a fight iv ever Westall got at ’im—­on the job.  You see—­they may bring it in manslarter after all.”

“’Ow does any one know ee wor there at all? who seed him?” inquired a white-haired elderly man, raising a loud quavering voice from the middle of the crowd.

“Charlie Dynes seed ’im,” cried several together.

“How do yer know ee seed ’im?”

From the babel of voices which followed the white-haired man slowly gathered the beginnings of the matter.  Charlie Dynes, Westall’s assistant, had been first discovered by a horsekeeper in Farmer Wellin’s employment as he was going to his work.  The lad had been found under a hedge, bleeding and frightfully injured, but still alive.  Close beside him was the dead body of Westall with shot-wounds in the head.  On being taken to the farm and given brandy, Dynes was asked if he had recognised anybody.  He had said there were five of them, “town chaps”; and then he had named Hurd quite plainly—­whether anybody else, nobody knew.  It was said he would die, and that Mr. Raeburn had gone to take his deposition.

“An’ them town chaps got off, eh?” said the elderly man.

“Clean!” said Patton, refilling his pipe.  “Trust them!”

Meanwhile, inside this poor cottage Marcella was putting out all the powers of the soul.  As the door closed behind her and the inspector, she saw Hurd sitting handcuffed in the middle of the kitchen, watched by a man whom Jenkins, the local policeman, had got in to help him, till some more police should arrive.  Jenkins was now upstairs searching the bedroom.  The little bronchitic boy sat on the fender, in front of the untidy fireless grate, shivering, his emaciated face like a yellowish white mask, his eyes fixed immovably on his father.  Every now and then he was shaken with coughing, but still he looked—­with the dumb devoted attention of some watching animal.

Hurd, too, was sitting silent.  His eyes, which seemed wider open and more brilliant than usual, wandered restlessly from thing to thing about the room; his great earth-stained hands in their fetters twitched every now and then on his knee.  Haggard and dirty as he was, there was a certain aloofness, a dignity even, about the misshapen figure which struck Marcella strangely.  Both criminal and victim may have it—­this dignity.  It means that a man feels himself set apart from his kind.

Hurd started at sight of Marcella.  “I want to speak to her,” he said hoarsely, as the inspector approached him—­“to that lady”—­nodding towards her.