But no one touched the corpse until the coroner arrived, shortly after daylight.
An examination showed that Ralph Vincent had been stabbed through the right lung by some unknown person, and this was the verdict rendered by the coroner's jury.
All that day a crowd of the villagers thronged the house, and Van went about among them like one in a dream, hardly able to realize what had happened a few short hours before.
But his uncle's last words rang constantly in the boy's ears, and he made up his mind that as soon as the funeral was over he would start out to hunt down the villain called Doc Clancy, who had a thumb missing from his right hand.
The day of the funeral came, and the remains of Ralph Vincent were interred.
Then came the reading of the will, and, to Van's astonishment, a man whom he had never seen before was present.
Before the will was read the lawyer introduced the stranger to Van as an own cousin and a nephew of the murdered man, who had just returned from a foreign port the day following the crime.
Van was not a great deal surprised at this, as he knew he had cousins whom he had never seen.
But what was his astonishment when the will had been read and he found that he had been utterly ignored by his uncle, and that John Moreland, the stranger, came in for the entire property?
But there it was in black and white, with his uncle's signature and those of the witnesses.