“I will look after them,” said Marcella, “and I will do the best I can for you.  Now I will go to Mrs. Hurd.”

Minta Hurd was sitting in a corner of the outhouse on the clay floor, her head leaning against the wall.  The face was turned upward, the eyes shut, the mouth helplessly open.  When Marcella saw her, she knew that the unhappy woman had already wept so much in the hours since her husband came back to her that she could weep no more.  The two little girls in the scantiest of clothing, half-fastened, sat on the floor beside her, shivering and begrimed—­watching her.  They had been crying at the tops of their voices, but were now only whimpering miserably, and trying at intervals to dry their tear-stained cheeks with the skirts of their frocks.  The baby, wrapped in an old shawl, lay on its mother’s knee, asleep and unheeded.  The little lean-to place, full of odds and ends of rubbish, and darkened overhead by a string of damp clothes—­was intolerably cold in the damp February dawn.  The children were blue; the mother felt like ice as Marcella stooped to touch her.  Outcast misery could go no further.

The mother moaned as she felt Marcella’s hand, then started wildly forward, straining her thin neck and swollen eyes that she might see through the two open doors of the kitchen and the outhouse.

“They’re not taking him away?” she said fiercely.  “Jenkins swore to me they’d give me notice.”

“No, he’s still there,” said Marcella, her voice shaking.  “The inspector’s come.  You shall have notice.”

Mrs. Hurd recognised her voice, and looked up at her in amazement.

“You must put this on,” said Marcella, taking off the short fur cape she wore.  “You are perished.  Give me the baby, and wrap yourself in it.”

But Mrs. Hurd put it away from her with a vehement hand.

“I’m not cold, miss—­I’m burning hot.  He made me come in here.  He said he’d do better if the children and I ud go away a bit.  An’ I couldn’t go upstairs, because—­because—­” she hid her face on her knees.

Marcella had a sudden sick vision of the horrors this poor creature must have gone through since her husband had appeared to her, splashed with the blood of his enemy, under that same marvellous moon which—­

Her mind repelled its own memories with haste.  Moreover, she was aware of the inspector standing at the kitchen door and beckoning to her.  She stole across to him so softly that Mrs. Hurd did not hear her.

“We have found all we want,” he said in his official tone, but under his breath—­“the clothes anyway.  We must now look for the gun.  Jenkins is first going to take him off to Widrington.  The inquest will be held to-morrow here, at ‘The Green Man.’  We shall bring him over.”  Then he added in another voice, touching his hat, “I don’t like leaving you, miss, in this place.  Shall Jenkins go and fetch somebody to look after that poor thing?  They’ll be all swarming in here as soon as we’ve gone.”