“Because I wasn’t asked. As for animated, they were talking high and loud as if they were quarrelling.”
“They could not be quarrelling.”
“I didn’t hear what they said.”
“Well: it doesn’t matter. The Squire turned back just at the entrance.”
Again the sexton shook his head.
“I know what I said,” he replied; “and I know what I saw.”
“Is there anybody in the village,” Leonard asked, “besides yourself, who remembers the—the event?”
“It was seventy years ago,” he said. “I’m the oldest man in the village, except the Squire. He remembers it very well, for all his mad ways. He’s bound to remember it. There’s nobody else.”
“Then they suspected one man.”
“John Dunning it was. Why, I was only seven years of age, but I knew well enough that it couldn’t be John. First, he wasn’t big enough—and then, he wasn’t man enough—and then, he wasn’t devil enough. But they tried him, and he got off and came back to the village. However, he had to go, because, you see, the people don’t like the company of a man who’s been tried for murder, even though he’s been let off; and they wouldn’t work with John, so the Squire gave him money, and he went away, out to Australia—him and all his family—and never been heard of since.”