They got the coffin up, and they took it to the room at the Star, at Alfreston, where inquests are held, and the doctors were there, and we were all shut out.  And Harry and John and I stood on the stairs.  But parson, being a friend of the doctor’s, he was let in, him and his friend.  And we heard voices and the squeak of the screws as they was drawn out; and we heard the coffin lid being laid down, and then there was a hush, and some one spoke up very sharp inside, and we couldn’t hear what he said for the noise and confusion that came from every one speaking at once, and nineteen to the dozen it seemed.

‘What is it?’ says Harry, trembling like a leaf:  ’O my God! what is it?  If they don’t open the door afore long, by God, I shall burst it open!  He was murdered, he was!  And if they wait much longer, that woman will have time to get away.’

As he spoke, the door opened and parson came out, and his friend with him.

‘These are the young men,’ says our parson.

‘Well, then,’ says parson number two, ’it’s a good thing I heard of this, and came down—­out of mere curiosity, I am ashamed to say—­for the man who is buried there is not the man whom I united in holy matrimony to Martha Blake two months ago last Tuesday.’

We didn’t understand.

‘But the poison?’ says Harry.

‘She may have poisoned him,’ said our parson, ’though I don’t think it.  But from what my friend here, the rector of St Mary Woolnoth, tells me, it is quite certain she never married him.’

‘Then she’s no right to anything?’ said Harry.

‘But what about the will?’ says I. But no one harkened to me.

And then Harry says, ’If she poisoned him she will be off by now.  Parson, will you come with me to keep my hands from violence, and my tongue from evil-speaking and slandering? for I must go home and see if that woman is there yet.’

And parson said he would; and it ended in us, all five of us, going up together, the new parson walking by me and talking to me like somebody out of the Bible, as it might be one of the disciples.

I got to know him well afterwards, and he was the best man that ever trod shoe-leather.

We all went up together to Charleston Farm, and in through the back, without knocking, and so to the parlour door.  We knew she was sitting in the parlour, because the red firelight fell out through the window, and made a bright patch that we see before we see the house itself properly; and we went, as I say, quietly in through the back; and in the kitchen I said, ’Oh, let me tell her, for what she said to me.’

And I was sorry the minute I’d said it, when I see the way that clergyman from London looked at me; and we all went up to the parlour door, and Harry opened it as was his right.