“I don’t know nothing about it, miss,” she stubbornly declared at last, with an inconsequent absurdity which smote Marcella’s pity afresh.  “How am I to know?  There was seven o’ them Oxford fellows at Tudley End—­that I know.  Who’s to say as Jim was with ’em at all last night?  Who’s to say as it wasn’t them as—­”

She stopped, shivering.  Marcella held her reluctant hand.

“You don’t know,” she said quietly, “that I saw your husband in here for a minute before I came in to you, and that he told me, as he had already told Jenkins, that it was in a struggle with him that Westall was shot, but that he had fired in self-defence because Westall was attacking him.  You don’t know, too, that Charlie Dynes is alive, and says he saw Hurd—­”

“Charlie Dynes!” Mrs. Hurd gave a shriek, and then fell to weeping and trembling again, so that Marcella had need of patience.

“If you can’t help me more,” she said at last in despair, “I don’t know what we shall do.  Listen to me.  Your husband will be charged with Westall’s murder.  That I am sure of.  He says it was not murder—­that it happened in a fight.  I believe it.  I want to get a lawyer to prove it.  I am your friend—­you know I am.  But if you are not going to help me by telling me what you know of last night I may as well go home—­and get your sister-in-law to look after you and the children.”

She rose as she spoke.  Mrs. Hurd clutched at her.

“Oh, my God!” she said, looking straight before her vacantly at the children, who at once began to cry again. “Oh, my God!  Look here, miss”—­her voice dropped, her swollen eyes fixed themselves on Marcella—­the words came out in a low, hurried stream—­“It was just after four o’clock I heard that door turn; I got up in my nightgown and ran down, and there was Jim.  ‘Put that light out,’ he says to me, sharp like.  ‘Oh, Jim,’ says I, ‘wherever have you been?  You’ll be the death o’ me and them poor children!’ ‘You go to bed,’ says he to me, ’and I’ll come presently.’  But I could see him, ’cos of the moon, almost as plain as day, an’ I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  And he went about the kitchen so strange like, puttin’ down his hat and takin’ it up again, an’ I saw he hadn’t got his gun.  So I went up and caught holt on him.  An’ he gave me a push back.  ‘Can’t you let me alone?’ he says; ’you’ll know soon enough.’  An’ then I looked at my sleeve where I’d touched him—­oh, my God! my God!”

Marcella, white to the lips and shuddering too, held her tight.  She had the seeing faculty which goes with such quick, nervous natures, and she saw the scene as though she had been there—­the moonlit cottage, the miserable husband and wife, the life-blood on the woman’s sleeve.