Next morning the children on their way to school crept past the rectory with wide eyes and open mouths.  And the grown people spoke in lower tones when their work led them past the handsome old house.  It had once been their pride, but now it was a place of horror to them.  The old housekeeper had succumbed to her fright and was very ill.  Liska went about her work silently, and the farm servants walked more heavily and chattered less than they had before.  The hump-backed sexton, who had not been allowed to enter the church and therefore had nothing to do, made an early start for the inn, where he spent most of the day telling what little he knew to the many who made an excuse to follow him there.

The only calm and undisturbed person in the rectory household was Muller.  He had made a thorough examination of the entire scene of the murder, but had not found anything at all.  Of one thing alone was he certain:  the murderer had come through the hidden passageway from the church.  There were two reasons to believe this, one of which might possibly not be sufficient, but the other was conclusive.

The heavy armchair before the desk, the chair on which the pastor was presumably sitting when the murderer entered, was half turned around, turned in just such a way as it would have been had the man who was sitting there suddenly sprung up in excitement or surprise.  The chair was pushed back a step from the desk and turned towards the entrance to the passageway.  Those who had been in the room during the day had reported that they had not touched any one of the articles of furniture, therefore the position of the chair was the same that had been given it by the man who had sat in it, by the murdered pastor himself.

Of course there was always the possibility that some one had moved the chair without realising it.  This clue, therefore, could not be looked upon as an absolutely certain one had it stood alone.  But there was other evidence far more important.  The great pool of blood was just half-way between the door of the passage and the armchair.  It was here, therefore, that the attack had taken place.  The pastor could not have turned in this direction in the hope of flight, for there was nothing here to give him shelter, no weapon that he could grasp, not even a cane.  He must have turned in this direction to meet and greet the invader who had entered his room in this unusual manner.  Turned to meet him as a brave man would, with no other weapon than the sacredness of his calling and his age.

But this had not been enough to protect the venerable priest.  The murderer must have made his thrust at once and his victim had sunk down dying on the floor of the room in which he had spent so many hours of quiet study, in which he had brought comfort and given advice to so many anxious hearts; for dying he must have been—­it would be impossible for a man to lose so much blood and live.