"In God's name?" cried Joyce not daring to enter, "what is it?"
"It was once the owner of this house I suppose," said Herrick grimly. "Now, it is a piece of carrion. Suicide apparently. Dead over twenty-four hours. Shot through the heart. A steady hand to do that. H'm, left-handed too. Is it suicide, or murder? Here's a damnable discovery to cap the adventure," said Dr. Jim gravely.
From the doorway came a gasp, a tittering laugh. Jim had just time to spring forward when Joyce lunged into his arms. The long expected nerve-storm had come at last.
"And sunsets fire, the Saxham spire, My guide post unto heaven."
So sang midway in the last century a local poet, who died long since and passed, poems and all, into oblivion. But the famous spire in its copper sheathing still catches the sunlight, and glows in the centre of Saxham, a veritable pillar of fire. Those natives who have emigrated, enlisted as soldiers, taken situations in London and elsewhere, shipped before the mast, as some have done, always remember church and spire. The children recall its ruddy blaze when they read Exodus.
Saxham was not a large place. It might have contained a couple of hundred inhabitants, probably less, and these principally agricultural labourers. They worked on the farms and estates which dotted the vast alluvial plain stretching to Beorminster. As the city, like that one mentioned in the Bible, is set upon a hill, the twin towers of the cathedral and Bishop Gandolf's spire can easily be seen from Saxham. But the villagers prefer their own spire and their own parson, rarely venturing the three miles to Beorminster. Those who do go, always return to their beloved hamlet, more convinced than ever as to the superiority of their birthplace. A sturdy stubborn set of rustics, these men and women of Saxham.
The topography of the country as set down in Herrick's map, showed that Saxham was almost the centre of the district, taking Beorminster as the real navel. The great plain was covered with many such hamlets, each clustering round its parent church; but Saxham was the nearest to the city. Far away on the other side was smoky Irongrip the manufacturing town; almost in sight of Marleigh and Heathcroft. Then sixteen miles across Southberry Heath (which Herrick and Joyce had so wearily trodden on the previous night) Southberry Junction roared with perpetual traffic for here, the great main line tapped the local railways which converged from all points. The pine-woods, sheltering Saxham from the chill winds of the moor, also barred it from the outside world, as Southberry was considered to be. Saxham, with its neighbouring hamlets, claimed to belong solely to Beorminster. The folk would have called themselves autochthonous, had they known of such a word and its meaning.