"Murdered!" repeated forty voices.
The bier was hastily set down. The bright torches were lowered to the level of the dead man's face and, making the sign of the cross, the monks crowded around to look.
"O sancta Maria, ora pro nobis!"
The dark purple bruises on the throat, and the frayed condition of the clothing round it, were proofs too strong to be confuted, of my uncle's statement.
"These marks may have arisen from some other cause than the one you suggest," remarked the leading monk in tones sweetly supercilious. He seemed annoyed, probably because my uncle had discovered what his monkish dulness had overlooked.
The fingers of the dead man's right hand were tightly clenched. My uncle proceeded to force them open, and as he did so there fell to the ground something which when picked up proved to be a grey cloth button adhering to a fragment of grey cloth, and assuredly not belonging to the garments of the dead man.
"This," said my uncle, "has been torn by the dead man from the clothes of him who hurled him over. There was evidently a struggle. This button must not be lost. It may be a means of tracing the assassin."
So, while the pious monks had been lifting to heaven their prayers and psalms, a death-struggle had been going on under the walls of their convent, perhaps within the very sound of their voices. But what motive had prompted the deed, and whose was the hand that had so swiftly hurled the aged man into the arms of death?
The sight of the grey cloth button—suggestive of a military cloak—recalled to my memory the figure that Daphne had seen at the fountain; and instantly there darted into my mind a terrible suspicion. The same had occurred to my uncle. Bending his head over to me, and pointing to the corpse, he said in a whisper: