“Yes; and Tommy said, if he’d thought they’d feed you like that he’d go to the workhouse himself.”

“Then the man was a pauper from the workhouse?”

“Well, he must have been, I suppose.”

“Are workhouse paupers usually fat and well-fed?”

“Well, no—come to think of it, not as a rule.”

“In fact, it struck Tommy Pringle and his friend that this was something a little out of the way in a workhouse subject?”

“Yes.”

“And if the alimentary canal was so entertaining to these gentlemen, I imagine the subject had come by his death shortly after a full meal.”

“Yes—oh, yes—he’d have had to, wouldn’t he?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Lord Peter. “That’s in your department, you know. That would be your inference, from what they said.”