station as quick as the pony could limp. I did this because I knew it was the proper place to go—not because old Silver-buttons Codling was the least good. 

 And in the crack of a thumb I had the whole village after me—asking questions, and wanting to look. But I kept going on, calling out to the folk to get out of the way. 

 Then my father came, and I stopped for him, and he looked the trap all over very carefully, as if it were something he was going to take at a valuation. 

 Then he said out loud: "This is a bad business; this is no accident. It looks to me like murder!" 

 "MURDER!" 

 The vicar had bustled up. He and my father almost tied for the first place in Breckonside, and so it was a settled thing that if my father thought one thing, the vicar, without any ill feeling, would take the opposite view. 

 "And why, Mr. Yarrow, why, may I ask? An accident is much more admissible—in this quiet parish. The horse has run away. See how lame he is, and the postman has cut wildly with an axe or other sharp weapon in order to—to—to rid himself of the furious animal—to get loose, in short, a foolish thing to do, I admit, but in such circumstances—I do not see——" 

 "No, Mr. Alderson, that is just it, you do not see," said my father. "There is this whip handle cut through six inches from the holder; what do you make of that?" 

 "Well," said the vicar, looking for arguments in defence of his parochial quiet, "there is the lash. There has been an accident, you see. Perhaps poor Harry went suddenly out of his mind. There is insanity in the family. He may have cut himself. That would account for the—the substance of a fluid nature resembling blood, and also for the lash cut from the butt of the whip!" 

 My father took the stained thong in his fingers. It was curiously braided, plait laid over plait, rather flat than round, and exceedingly neat. 

 "This is not the lash of Harry Foster's whip," he said.  "I ought to know, because I sold him the whip. This is a worked lash, and if I mistake not I know the fingers that wrought that pattern." 

 

 

 Prev. P 13/235 next