Then the old story was revived--the story which had almost gone out of men’s memories--how the poor gentleman, then young, still under thirty, with a fine high temper of his own--it was odd how the fine high temper had got itself remembered--lost in a single day his wife and his brother-in-law, and never held up his head again, nor went out of the house, nor took notice of man, woman, or child, nor took a gun in his hand, nor called his dogs, nor rode to hounds, nor went to church.
These reminiscences had been told a thousand times in the dingy little room of the village public-house. They reeked, like the room, of beer and tobacco and wet garments. For seventy years they had been told in the same words. They had been, so far, that most interesting form of imaginative work--the story without an end. Now the end had arrived, and there would be no more to tell.
The story was finished. Then the door opened, and the ci-devant scarer of birds appeared. He limped inside, he closed the door carefully; he looked around the room. He supported himself bravely with his two sticks, and he began to speak.
“We’re all friends here? All friends? There’s nobody here as will carry things to that young man? No.”
“By your leave. Presently. I shall lend a hand to-morrow or next day to digging a grave. We must all come to it. Why not, therefore?”
He looked important, and evidently had something more to say, if he could find a way to say it.
“We’re all thinking of the same thing,” he began. “It’s the old Squire who will soon be lyin’ dead, how he never went out of the place for seventy long years--as long as I can remember. Why? Because there was a man murdered and a woman died. Who was the man murdered? The Squire’s brother-in-law. Who murdered him? John Dunning, they said. John Dunning, he was tried and he got off and he went away. Who murdered that man? John Dunning didn’t. Why? Because John Dunning didn’t go to the wood for two hours afterwards. Who murdered that man, I say?”
At this point he accepted the hospitality of the proffered glass of beer.
“I know who done it. I always have known. Nobody knows but me. I’ve known for all these years; and I’ve never told. For why? He would ha’ killed me, too. For certain sure he would ha’ killed me. Who was it, then? I’ll tell you. It was the man that lies a-dyin’ over there. It was the Squire himself--that’s who it was. No one else was in the wood all the morning but the Squire and the other gentleman. I say, the Squire done it; the Squire and nobody else. The Squire done it. The Squire done it.”