paddock, surrounded with pollard willows: the
water reflecting them upon its surface, as also a
little patch of sky which it gets sight of somehow,
between the branches. It is a comfortable
and innocent little place this, with a small
wood close by, with a haystack near the gate,
and stay—what is this? There are figures here
—two men—how plainly I see them! But
what are they doing? They are in violent
movement. Are they fighting, wrestling, struggling?
It is so. A struggle is going on between
them, and one of the two—he wears a
bright red cap—has the best of it. He has his
antagonist, who seems to be weak and makes
but faint resistance, by the throat; he strikes
fiercely at the wretched man's head with a thick
stick or club he holds, and pressing on him
sorely, beats him fiercely to the ground. The
mail who has the best of it—there is something
more of red about him besides his cap; is it his
beard?—does not spare the fallen man, but
beats him still about the head—a gray head
surely—with his club. Horrible sight to look
on. I would give anything to tear myself
away from the telescope or at least to close my
eyes, and shut out the sickening spectacle.
But the butchery is nearly over. The gray-
haired man continues yet to struggle and resist,
but only for a little while. In a very
short time the contest, as I plainly see, will be
over. The conquered man, making one more
supreme effort, rises nearly to his feet, receives
another crushing blow, falls suddenly to the
ground, and is still. Merciful Heaven! what
is this! Who are these two men? Do I know
them? It cannot be that that is my dear old
friend lying helpless on the ground, and that
the other is the man whom I took note of, just
now, in the rectory garden. It cannot be that
this deed, of which I have been a witness— inactive,
powerless to help or save—is a MURDER!

I felt for a moment as if all presence of mind,
and power of action, had deserted me. What
was I to do? That was all that I could say,
over and over again, as I sat still gazing
through the telescope with an instinctive feeling
that I must not lose one single incident
of the scene before me. All that happened I
must see. I recalled my senses by a mighty
effort, and reasoned as men do in a crisis.
What was to be done? The place where this
horrible deed was being committed was so far
off—about three quarters of a mile as the crow
flies, more than a mile by any road I knew of
—that there could be no possibility of my
getting there in time to be of the slightest
use. The end, if it had not come already—
and I felt certain that it had—must most surely
have come before I could traverse that distance.
There was but one way now in which
I could be of any service, and that was in
securing the detection of the murderer. I
must remain at my post and watch his every
movement, besides endeavouring to render myself
certain, so far as the glass would enable me
to be so, concerning his appearance and dress.
So there I sat, helpless and spell-bound, but
watching with devouring eyes. There was a
sudden stillness where there had been before so
much of struggling and movement. The blows
had ceased to fall now. The deed was accomplished,
and there was no more need for them.
The man himself, the murderer, was still, and I
made sure of his identity. There was the red
hair, there was the red beard, there was the
scarlet cap lying on the ground, there was the
canvas frock with the patch in front. There
was no doubt. Alas! was there any doubt
either about that other figure lying on the grass
beside him? The light-coloured summer coat
which he had worn when I last saw him, the
white hairs. It was nearly too much to bear,
but a savage craving for vengeance came to my
aid, and braced up my energies. I dispelled
by an effort of the will a dimness which came
before my eyes, and straining them more intensely
than ever, saw the man with the red
cap start up, as if suddenly conscious that
he was losing time, and set himself to work to
rifle the body of his victim. As far as I could
see, he was engaged in emptying the poor old
man's pockets, and once I thought I saw the
gleam of something golden; but this might have
been fancy. At all events he continued for
some time to turn the body over and over,
and then, having, I suppose, satisfied himself
with what he had secured, he got up, and
dragging the corpse after him, made his way to
the little wood close by, and entering it, disappeared
from sight. And now, indeed, a crisis
had arrived when it was difficult in the extreme
to know how to act. What if that disappearance
were final? What if he should get out of the
wood at the further extremity and I should see
him no more?

It was a breathless moment. I continued to
watch, and hardly breathed. At last, and
when I was becoming desperate with uncertainty,
I saw something move again. The
trees were parted, and at the same place where
the murderer had entered the wood, bearing
with him the body of my old friend, he now reappeared,
alone. He stood a moment as if undecided,
and then came out, looking behind
him first, and then arranging the disturbed
boughs as though to make the place look as
if no one had passed that way. That done,
he stood still for a moment, looking about
him as if in search of something, and then
he moved across—how unconscious of the
pursuer on his track, the telescope following his
every step, unseen and unsuspected!—to
where at the corner of the meadow there was,
as I have mentioned, a little pond with pollard
willows round about its margin. He stooped
and took up some object lying beside the pond.
What was it? There was something green
about it. Was it old Mr. Irwin's butterfly net?
I could not see with certainty, but no doubt it
was, and no doubt the poor old gentleman had
wandered away from the footpath, which was
near at hand, in pursuit of some entomological
specimen.

The man with the red cap threw this object
into the water. Then taking off his canvas
frock, he began to wash the front of it, stained