“The only son of his mother, and she was a widow!”
There had to be an inquest. It did not come to much. The most that could be said was that he died from a kick at football. “A most unfortunate but an accidental kick,” quoth the coroner. Tod had said that he saw the kick given: that is, had seen some foot come flat down with a bang on the side of little Hearn’s head; and when Tod was asked if he recognized the foot, he replied No: boots looked very much alike, and a great many were thrust out in the skirmish, all kicking together.
Not one would own to having given it. For the matter of that, the fellow might not have been conscious of what he did. No end of thoughts glanced towards Barrington: both because he was so ferocious at the game, and that he had a spite against Hearn.
“I never touched him,” said Barrington, when this leaked out; and his face and voice were boldly defiant. “It wasn’t me. I never so much as saw that Hearn was down.”
And as there were others quite as brutal at football as Barrington, he was believed.
We could not get over it any way. It seemed so dreadful that he should have been left alone to die. Hall was chiefly to blame for that; and it cowed her.
“Look here,” said Tod to us, “I have a message for one of you. Whichever the cap fits may take it to himself. When Hearn was dying he told me to say that he forgave the fellow who kicked him.”
This was the evening of the inquest-day. We had all gathered in the porch by the stone bench, and Tod took the opportunity to relate what he had not related before. He repeated every word that Hearn had said.
“Did Hearn know who it was, then?” asked John Whitney.
“I think so.”