Last of all, that child in the glade—­a child strayed from one of the cottages, or the child of some woodcutter who had brought her with him, who was perhaps a very little way off, who listened to the tale of what the child had seen five minutes after she had seen it.  Of course nothing much would be thought of the child’s tale at first; but it would assume importance directly suspicion had been aroused; it would link up with other circumstances, it would suggest new ideas and further researches to the minds of detectives, it might be the clue that eventually hanged him.

It seemed to Dale as he went over things in this quivering, quaking manner that, from the little girl weaving flowers back to the two Jews selling slops, he had recruited an army of witnesses to denounce and destroy him.

Only in one respect had he not bungled.  He got rid of the clothes and hat all right.  Cut and torn into narrow stripes they had gone comfortably down the drains of the temperance hotel in Stamford Street.  That was a night’s wise labor.  But the labor and thoughtful care had come too late, on top of all the previous folly.

And he said to himself, “It’s prob’ly all up with me.  This quiet is the usual trick of the p’lice to throw you off the scent.  They’re playin’ wi’ me.  They let me sim to run free, because they know they can ’aarve me when they want me.”

With such thoughts, he went down-stairs of a morning to talk jovially with Ridgett, to chaff Miss Yorke; and with the thoughts unchanged he came up-stairs to glower at Mavis across the breakfast-table.

His thoughts in regard to Mavis were extraordinarily complicated.  At first he had been horribly afraid of her—­dreading their meeting as a crisis, a turning-point, an awful bit of touch-and-go work.  It seemed that she of all people would be the one to suspect the truth.  When she heard of the man’s death, surely the idea must have flashed into her mind:  “This is Will’s doing.”  But then perhaps, when no facts appeared to support the idea, she might have abandoned it.  Nevertheless it would readily come flashing back again—­and again, and again.

To his delight, however, he saw that she did not suspect now, and there was nothing to show that she ever had suspected.  And he thought in the midst of his great relief:  “How stupid she is really.  Any other woman would have put two and two together.  But she is a stupid woman.  Stupidity is the key-note to her character—­and it furnishes the explanation of half her wrong-doing.”

This reflection was comforting, but he still considered her to be a source of terrible danger to him.  For the moment at least, all his resentment about her past unchasteness and her recent escapade was entirely obliterated; it was a closed chapter; he did not seem to care two pence about it—­that is, he did not feel any torment of jealousy.  The offense was expiated.  But he must not on any account let her see this—­no, because it