There was a constantly changing crowd gathered in front of the house in Welch’s Court.  An inquest was being held in the room adjoining the kitchen.  The court, which ended at the gate of the cottage, was fringed for several yards on each side by rows of squalid, wondering children, who understood it that Coroner Whidden was literally to sit on the dead body,—­Mr. Whidden, a limp, inoffensive little man, who would not have dared to sit down on a fly.  He had passed, pallid and perspiring, to the scene of his perfunctory duties.

The result of the investigation was awaited with feverish impatience by the people outside.  Mr. Shackford had not been a popular man; he had been a hard, avaricious, passionate man, holding his own way remorselessly.  He had been the reverse of popular, but he had long been a prominent character in Stillwater, because of his wealth, his endless lawsuits, and his eccentricity, an illustration of which was his persistence in living entirely alone in the isolated and dreary old house, that was henceforth to be inhabited by his shadow.  Not his shadow alone, however, for it was now remembered that the premises were already held in fee by another phantasmal tenant.  At a period long anterior to this, one Lydia Sloper, a widow, had died an unexplained death under that same roof.  The coincidence struck deeply into the imaginative portion of Stillwater.  “The Widow Sloper and old Shackford have made a match of it,” remarked a local humorist, in a grimmer vain than customary.  Two ghosts had now set up housekeeping, as it were, in the stricken mansion, and what might not be looked for in the way of spectral progeny!

It appeared to the crowd in the lane that the jury were unconscionably long in arriving at a decision, and when the decision was at length reached it gave but moderate satisfaction.  After a spendthrift waste of judicial mind the jury had decided that “the death of Lemuel Shackford was caused by a blow on the left temple, inflicted with some instrument not discoverable, in the hands of some person or persons unknown.”

“We knew that before,” grumbled a voice in the crowd, when, to relieve public suspense, Lawyer Perkins—­a long, lank man, with stringy black hair—­announced the verdict from the doorstep.

The theory of suicide had obtained momentary credence early in the morning, and one or two still clung to it with the tenacity that characterizes persons who entertain few ideas.  To accept this theory it was necessary to believe that Mr. Shackford had ingeniously hidden the weapon after striking himself dead with a single blow.  No, it was not suicide.  So far from intending to take his own life, Mr. Shackford, it appeared, had made rather careful preparations to live that day.  The breakfast-table had been laid over night, the coals left ready for kindling in the Franklin stove, and a kettle, filled with water to be heated for his tea or coffee, stood on the hearth.