“Hang her!” gasped Mrs. Ayres.  “She never did it any more than I did.  I went to school with Lucinda Hart.”

“Why should she kill a steady boarder, when the hotel has run down so and she’s been so hard up for money?” demanded Sylvia.  “Hang her!  You’d better run along, sonny; the other customers will be waiting; and you had better not talk too much till you are sure what you are talking about.”

The boy went out and closed the door, and they heard his merry whistle as he raced out of the yard.

Chapter VII

Sylvia Whitman, walking home along the familiar village street, felt like a stranger exploring it for the first time.  She had never before seen it under the glare of tragedy which her own consciousness threw before her eyes.  No tragedy had ever been known in East Westland since she could remember.  It had been a peaceful little community, with every day much like the one before and after, except for the happenings of birth and death, which are the most common happenings of nature.

But now came death by violence, and even the wayside weeds seemed to wave in a lurid light.  Now and then Sylvia unconsciously brushed her eyes, as if to sweep away a cobweb which obstructed her vision.  When she reached home, that also looked strange to her, and even her husband’s face in the window had an expression which she had never seen before.  So also had Horace Allen’s.  Both men were in the south room.  There was in their faces no expression which seemed to denote a cessation of conversation.  In fact, nothing had passed between the two men except the simple statement to each other of the news which both had heard.  Henry had made no comment, neither had Horace.  Both had set, with gloomy, shocked faces, entirely still.  But Sylvia, when she entered, forced the situation.

“Why should she kill a steady boarder, much as she needed one?” she queried.

And Horace responded at once.  “There is no possible motive,” he said.  “The arrest is a mere farce.  It will surely prove so.”

Then Henry spoke.  “I don’t understand, for my part, why she is arrested at all,” he said, grimly.

Horace laughed as grimly.  “Because there is no one else to arrest, and the situation seems to call for some action,” he replied.

“But they must have some reason.”

“All the reason was the girl’s (Hannah Simmons, I believe her name is) seeming to be keeping something back, and saying that Miss Hart gave Miss Farrel some essence of peppermint last night, and the fact that the stable-boy seems to be in love with Hannah, and jealous and eager to do her mistress some mischief, and has hinted at knowing something, which I don’t believe, for my part, he does.”