The murderer had been found—­a comparatively simple proceeding.  But, in the finding him, the ulcer of a hideous suspicion, spread by popular madness, and inflamed by popular hatred, had also been probed and cleansed.  As Boden’s evidence progressed, building up the story of Brand’s sleuth-hound pursuit of his victim, and silently verified from point to point by the local knowledge of the audience, the change in the collective mind of this typical gathering of shepherds, farmers, and small tradesmen might have been compared to the sudden coming of soft weather into the iron tension, the black silence, of a great frost.  Gales of compunction blew; of self-interest also; and the common judgment veered with them.

After the inevitable verdict had been recorded, a fresh jury was empanelled, and there was a stamping of sturdy Cumbrian feet up the inn stairs to view the pitiful remains of another human being, botched by Nature in the flesh, no less lamentably than Melrose in the spirit.  The legal inquiry into Brand’s flight and death was short and mostly formal; but the actual evidence—­as compared with current gossip—­of his luckless mother, now left sonless and husbandless, and as to the relations of the family with Faversham, hastened the melting process in the public mind.  It showed a man in bondage indeed to a tyrant; but doing what he could to lighten the hand of the tyrant on others; privately and ineffectively generous; remorseful for the sins of another; and painfully aware of his mixed responsibility.

Yet naturally there were counter currents.  Andover, the old Cumbrian squire, whose personal friction with Faversham had been sharpest, left the inn with a much puzzled mind, but not prepared as yet to surrender his main opinion of a young man, who after all had feathered his nest so uncommonly well.  “They may say what they d—­n please,” said the furious and disappointed Nash, as he departed in company with his shabby accomplice, the sallow-faced clerk, “but he’s walked off with the dibs, an’ I suppose he thinks he’ll jolly well keep ’em.  The ’cutest young scoundrel I ever came across!” which, considering the range of the speaker’s experience, was testimony indeed.

Regret, on the one hand, for a monstrous and exposed surmise; on the other, instinctive resentment of the man’s huge, unearned luck under the will that Melrose would have revoked had he lived a few more hours, as contrasted with the plight of Felicia Melrose; between these poles men’s minds went wavering.  Colonel Barton stood at the door of the inn before Faversham emerged for a few undecided moments, and finally walked away, like Andover, with the irritable reflection that the grounds on which he had originally cut the young man still largely stood; and he was not going to kow-tow to mere money.  He would go and have tea with Lady Tatham; she was a sensible woman.  Harry’s behaviour seemed to him sentimental.

Faversham, Boden, and Harry Tatham left the inn together and were joined by Undershaw outside.  They walked silently through the irregular village street where groups stood at the cottage doors to see them pass.  As they emerged upon the high road the three others perceived that they were alone.  Faversham had disappeared.