again, he asked with sudden suspicion, “You’ve nothing to do with ’im—eh? You’re not an hinterested party, eh?”

And then Jean Bower, who had never told a lie, lied. “No, I’m just a visitor to Terriford,” she murmured.

Reassured, he went on, keeping near the low wall, as far from the church as was possible.

Suddenly a turn in the narrow way between the graves left the church to their right, and Jean saw before her what she had come to see, and instinctively she clutched hold of her companion’s strong arm and clung to it, feeling sick and faint.

Lighted by two big flares, whence had come the curious glow which Jean had thought caused by a distant fire, a group of men were moving about close to, and just below, the walls of the old stone church; and stretching in dancing, shadowy lines on the gravestones round, the men’s shadows came and went in queer, grotesque shapes.

Moving very slowly, her companion advanced nearer and nearer to the strange, uncannily silent scene, at which Jean, gathering a desperate courage from within herself, stared with affrighted eyes. Then all at once she saw the man whose image filled her heart.

98Harry Garlett was standing almost exactly facing her, at the head of Emily Garlett’s open grave. He seemed quite incurious of what was being done, for he was staring straight before him, his bare head flung back.

98

“The Home Office gent ’as ’is back turned to us,” whispered Jean’s companion. “’E’s ’ere to see that there’s no tampering with the poor lady’s remains.”

The girl pressed forward, shrouded in a darkness which was made the more intense by the bright light shed by the flares beyond, and, gradually, she began to realize exactly what was taking place in the lighted-up space before her.

Four men, two on each side of what looked like a deep, narrow trench, were exerting all their strength to lift the coffin up out of what Jean knew to be the freshly opened grave of Harry Garlett’s wife. And, after what seemed to the agonized watcher a long, long time, they succeeded in their task. Then there came the sound of heavy, muffled footsteps; out of the darkness stepped two other men, and the six together placed the coffin on to a hand bier which Jean had not noticed before.

“They’ll take her to that cottage yonder: I helped to get it ready for ’em,” muttered 

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