So they piled horror upon horror; then came Clement Hicks, as one having authority, and bade them begone.  The ill-omened fowls hopped off; relations began to collect; there was an atmosphere of suppressed electricity about the place, and certain women openly criticised the prominent attitude Hicks saw fit to assume.  This, however, did not trouble him.  He wrote to the lawyer at Newton, fixed a day for the funeral, and then turned his attention to Mr. Lezzard.  The ancient resented Clement’s interference not a little, but Hicks speedily convinced him that his animosity mattered nothing.  The bee-keeper found this little taste of power not unpleasant.  He knew that everything was his own property, and he enjoyed the hate and suspicion in the eyes of those about him.  The hungry crowd haunted him, but he refused it any information.  Mr. Lezzard picked a quarrel, but he speedily silenced the old man, and told him frankly that upon his good behaviour must depend his future position.  Crushed and mystified, the widower whispered to those interested with himself in his wife’s estate; and so, before the reading of the will, there slowly grew a very deep suspicion and hearty hatred of Clement Hicks.  None had considered him in connection with Mrs. Lezzard’s fortune, for he always kept aloof from her; but women cannot easily shut their lips over such tremendous matters of news, and so it came about that some whisper from Chris or dark utterance from old Mrs. Hicks got wind, and a rumour grew that the bee-keeper was the dead woman’s heir.

Facts contributed colour to the suspicion, for it was known that Clement had of late given Chris one or two pretty presents, and a ring that cost gold.  His savings were suspected to justify 110 such luxuries; yet that a speedy change in his manner of life might be expected was also manifest from the fact that he had been looking into the question of a new stone cottage, on the edge of the Moor, where the heather in high summer would ripple to the very doors of his beehives.

The distrust created by these facts was quickly set at rest, for Mrs. Lezzard sank under ground within four days of her dissolution; then, after the eating of funeral baked meats, those interested assembled in the parlour to hear the will.  The crowd whispered and growled, and looked gloomily across at Hicks and the little figure of his mother who had come in rusty black to witness his triumph.  Then a young lawyer from Newton adjusted his spectacles, rustled his papers, and poured himself out a glass of grocer’s port before proceeding.  But his task involved no strain upon him, and was indeed completed within five minutes.  Black disappointment, dismay, and despair were the seeds sown by that unimpassioned voice; and at his conclusion a silence as blank as any that reigned in the ears of the dead fell upon those who listened—­on those who had hoped so much and were confronted with so little.