“Have yer thought o’ tellin’ John Dempsey?”

“I hain’t thought o’ tellin’ nobody.  An’ I shouldn’t ha’ told Miss Leighton what I did tell her, if she ‘adn’t come naggin’ about my givin’ notice.”

“You might as well tell John Dempsey.  Why, it’s his business, is old Watson!  Haven’t yer seen ’im at all?”

Halsey said “No,” holding his handsome old head rather high.  Had he belonged to a higher station in life, his natural reticence, and a fastidious personal dignity would have carried him far.  To a modern statesman they are at least as valuable as brains.  In the small world of Ipscombe they only meant that Halsey himself held rather scornfully aloof from the current village gossip, and got mocked at for his pains.  The ordinary human instinct revenged itself, however, when he was tete-a-tete with his old chum Peter Betts.  Betts divined at any rate from the expression in the old man’s eyes that he might talk, and welcome.

So he poured out what he knew about John Dempsey, a Canadian lad working in the Forestry Corps at Ralstone, who turned out to be the grandson of the Dempsey who had always been suspected of the murder of Richard Watson in the year 1859.  This young Dempsey, he said, had meant to come to Ipscombe after the war, and put what he knew before the police.  But finding himself sent to Ralstone, which was only five miles from Ipscombe, he saw no reason to wait, and he had already given all the information he could to the superintendent of police at Millsborough.  His grandfather had signed a written confession before his death, and John Dempsey had handed it over.  The old man, it appeared, had “turned pious” during a long illness before his death, and had wished to square matters with his conscience and the Almighty.  When his grandson had volunteered for the war, and was about to sail for Europe, old Dempsey had sent for him, had told him the story, and charged him, when he was able, to place his confession in the proper hands.  And having done that, he died “very quiet and comfortable”—­so John Dempsey reported.

“Which is more than poor Jem Watson did,” growled Halsey.  He felt neither respect nor sympathy for a man who, having set up a secret, couldn’t keep it; and the confession itself, rather than the crime confessed, confirmed the poor opinion he had always held of the elder Dempsey when they were young men in the village together.  But he agreed to let Betts bring “young John” to see him.  And thereupon they went back to the sowing of one of Miss Henderson’s big fields with winter wheat.

When the milking was done, and work was nearly over for the day, a note brought by messenger arrived at the farm for Miss Henderson.  It was from Ellesborough—­a few scribbled words.  “I am prevented from coming this evening.  The Chief Forestry Officer of my district has just arrived, and stays the night.  I hope to come over to-morrow between six and seven.  Shall I find you?”