"Why, don't you see, they'd have made more of Carfax. Nobody said a blessed thing that any one mightn't have said."
Lawrence thought heavily for a moment or two, and then he brought out--
"Carfax was a stinker--a rotten fellow. That's granted, but there was more in it than just Carfax. Why, any one could give him a knock on the chin any day and there's no loss, but to have a feller killed in Sannet Wood where all those old Druids---"
As the words came from him Lawrence stopped.
"Why, yes. I wish I were a clever feller an' I could say what I mean, but if I'd been a man with a bit of grey matter that's what I'd have gone in for--those old stones, those old fellers who used to slash your throat to please their God. My soul, there's stuff there. _They_ knew what fighting _was--they'd_ have played footer with you. Ever since I was a tiny kid they've excited me, and if I'd been a brainy feller I'd have known a lot more, but the minute I start reactin' about them I get heavy, can't keep my eyes to it. But I've walked miles--often and often--to see a stone or a hill, don't yer know, and Sannet Wood's one o' the best. So, says I, when I hear about young Carfax bein' done for right there at the very place, I says to myself, 'You may look and look--hold your old inquests--collar your likely feller--but it wasn't a man that did it, and you'll have to go further than human beings if you fix on the culprit.'"
This was, in all probability, the longest speech that Lawrence had ever made in his life. He himself seemed to think so, for he added in short jerks: "It was those old Druids--got sick--o' the sight--o' Carfax's dirty body--bangin' about in their preserves--an' they gave him a chuck under the chin," and after that there was silence.
To Olva the effect of this was uncanny. He played, it seemed, a spiritual Blind Man's Buff. On every side of him things filled the air; once and again he would touch them, sometimes he would fancy that he was alone, clear, isolated, when suddenly something again would blunder up against him. And always with him, driving him into the bustle of his fellow men, flinging him, hurling him from one noise to another noise, was the terror of silence. Let him once be alone, once waiting in suspense, and he would hear. . . . What would he hear?