The man turned round. “Every man and every woman, too,” he muttered huskily, “is hinnocent, as we well knows, until found guilty. But it stands to reason, don’t it, that this kind of thing ain’t done for nothing? ’E ’as got a nerve to be ’ere to-night at all—’e needn’t ’a been.”
A moment later, turning round 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.
Harry 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.
“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.