The Abbot replied with reticence, couldn’t say. If a murder, anybody might have done it. Burglary or pocket-picking wanted ’prenticeship. Not so, murder. We were all of us up to that. Had seen scores of people come to identify, and never saw one person struck in that particular way. Might, however, have been stomach and not mind. If so, rum stomach. But to be sure there were rum everythings. Pity there was not a word of truth in that superstition about bodies bleeding when touched by the hand of the right person; you never got a sign out of bodies. You got row enough out of such as her⁠—she was good for all night now (referring here to the banging demands for the liver), “but you got nothing out of bodies if it was ever so.”

There being nothing more to be done until the inquest was held next day, the friends went away together, and Gaffer Hexam and his son went their separate way. But, arriving at the last corner, Gaffer bade his boy go home while he turned into a red-curtained tavern, that stood dropsically bulging over the causeway, “for a half-a-pint.”