“Come, father; let us go.”

Sim rose at this, and walked like one in a dream.  Ralph took his arm, and as the people crowded upon them, he pushed them aside, and they passed out.

The direction of the company through the gray mist of that morning was towards the place where the body lay.  Sim was to be accused of the crime.  After the preliminaries of investigation were gone through, the witnesses were called.  None had seen the murder.  The body of the murdered man had been found by a laborer.  There was a huge sharp stone under the head, and death seemed to have resulted from a fracture of the skull caused by a heavy fall.  There was no appearance of a blow.  As to Sim, the circumstantial evidence looked grave.  Old Wilson had been seen to pass through Smeathwaite after dark; he must have done so to reach his lodgings at the tailor’s house.  Sim had been seen abroad about the same hour.  This was not serious; but now came Sim’s landlord.  He had called on the tailor the previous morning for his rent and could not get it.  Late the same night Sim had knocked at his door with the money.

“When I ax’t him where he’d come from so late,” said the man, “he glower’t at me daiztlike, and said nought.”

“What was his appearance?”

“His claes were a’ awry, and he keep’t looking ahint him.”

At this there was a murmur among the bystanders.  There could not be a doubt of Sim’s guilt.

At a moment of silence Ralph stepped out.  He seemed much moved.  Might he ask the witnesses some questions?  Certainly.  It was against the rule, but still he might do so.  Then he inquired exactly into the nature of the wound that had apparently caused death.  He asked for precise information as to the stone on which the head of the deceased was found lying.

It lay fifty yards to the south of the bridge.

Then he argued that as there was no wound on the dead man other than the fracture of the skull, it was plain that death had resulted from a fall.  How the deceased had come by that fall was now the question.  Was it not presumable that he had slipped his foot and had fallen?  He reminded them that Wilson was lame on one leg.  If the fall were the result of a blow, was it not preposterous to suppose that a man of Sim’s slight physique could have inflicted it?  Under ordinary circumstances, only a more powerful man than Wilson himself could have killed him by a fall.

At this the murmur rose again among the bystanders, but it sounded to Ralph like the murmur of beasts being robbed of their prey.

As to the tailor having been seen abroad at night, was not that the commonest occurrence?  With the evidence of Sim’s landlord Ralph did not deal.

It was plain that Sim could not be held over for trial on evidence such as was before them.  He was discharged, and an open verdict was returned.  The spectators were not satisfied, however, to receive the tailor back again as an innocent man.  Would he go upstairs and look at the body?  There was a superstition among them that a dead body would bleed at a touch from the hand of the murderer.  Sim said nothing, but stared wildly about him.