In the midst of situations the most solemn and tragic there often falls a light purely farcical in its incongruity.  Such a gleam was unconsciously projected upon the present crisis by Mr. Bodge, better known in the village as Father Bodge.  Mr. Bodge was stone deaf, naturally stupid, and had been nearly moribund for thirty years with asthma.  Just before night-fall he had crawled, in his bewildered, wheezy fashion, down to the tavern, where he found a somber crowd in the bar-room.  Mr. Bodge ordered his mug of beer, and sat sipping it, glancing meditatively from time to time over the pewter rim at the mute assembly.  Suddenly he broke out:  “S’pose you’ve heerd that old Shackford’s ben murdered.”

So the sun went down on Stillwater.  Again the great wall of pines and hemlocks made a gloom against the sky.  The moon rose from behind the tree-tops, frosting their ragged edges, and then sweeping up to the zenith hung serenely above the world, as if there were never a crime, or a tear, or a heart-break in it all.

III

On the afternoon of the following day Mr. Shackford was duly buried.  The funeral, under the direction of Mr. Richard Shackford, who acted as chief mourner and was sole mourner by right of kinship, took place in profound silence.  The carpenters, who had lost a day on Bishop’s new stables, intermitted their sawing and hammering while the services were in progress; the steam was shut off in the iron-mills, and no clinking of the chisel was heard in the marble yard for an hour, during which many of the shops had their shutters up.  Then, when all was over, the imprisoned fiend in the boilers gave a piercing shriek; the leather bands slipped on the revolving drums, the spindles leaped into life again, and the old order of things was reinstated,—­outwardly, but not in effect.

In general, when the grave closes over a man his career is ended.  But Mr. Shackford was never so much alive as after they had buried him.  Never before had he filled so large a place in the public eye.  Though invisible, he sat at every fireside.  Until the manner of his death had been made clear, his ubiquitous presence was not to be exorcised.  On the morning of the memorable day a reward of one hundred dollars—­afterwards increased to five hundred, at the insistence of Mr. Shackford’s cousin—­had been offered by the board of selectmen for the arrest and conviction of the guilty party.  Beyond this and the unsatisfactory inquest, the authorities had done nothing, and were plainly not equal to the situation.

When it was stated, the night of the funeral, that a professional person was coming to Stillwater to look into the case, the announcement was received with a breath of relief.