"T' Gospil truth," repeated Pippany Webster, at the other side of the wall. "Nowt but t' Gospil truth, Mestur Perris, sir."
Perris started and shivered.
"Ha' you said a word o' this to onnybody else?" he asked in a voice that seemed to himself to be a long way off. "Ha' you, now?"
"Not a word, mestur!" asserted Pippany. "Not a word to nobody. I've kep' it to myself."
"Nowt to yon Tibby Graddige?" asked Perris.
Pippany uttered a snort of derision.
"Her?" he said. "Noe!—not likely, mestur. I wodn't trust no woman wi' a secret like that theer. I tell yer, I've said nowt to nobody."
Perris remained leaning against the wall, his eyes always fixed on the open door of the house. Behind him, Pippany, waiting for him to speak, began to pick off the moss and lichen which had grown on the old masonry.
"When ye been i' them woods," said Perris at last, "when ye been i' them woods yonder, at nights, ha' you iver seen onnybody else hangin' about?"
"No, mestur. There's nobody goes into them woods at nights," replied Pippany, with decision. "Nobody wo'd go. Ye know 'at yon theer place wheerwheer I see'd them—is what they call haunted—there's a sperrit walks theer. No—I never seen nobody about them woods—'ceptin' them."
"What about t' gamekeeper?" asked Perris. Pippany laughed with further derision.
"T' gam'keeper niver goes theer," he answered. "He's ower fond o' stoppin' indoors, is t' gam'-keeper. If he iver goes that way he niver gets no forrarder nor t' Dancin' Bear. I been all ower them woods at night, an' I niver seen nobody—'ceptin' them."
Perris moved away from the wall. Without looking at Pippany, he flung him a word over his shoulder.
"Show me wheer ye posted yersen i' that granary t' other night," he said.
Pippany moved round to the gate of the fold with alacrity. He was convinced by that time that Perris would do him no hurt, and he had the fervour of the born busybody, and was delighted at the prospect of showing his cleverness in playing the spy. He shambled across the litter of the fold and up the steps of the granary, with Perris at his heels. As they entered, a big grey rat scuttered across the floor, stopped at the mouth of its hole in one corner, looked at them a second out of its beady eyes, and disappeared. To Perris the place seemed strangely quiet and unfamiliar.
Pippany went over to the slatted window and pushed the slats aside. He pointed a crooked forefinger towards the house.
"Here's wheer I stood, ye see, mestur," he said eagerly. "Ye can see t' house i' full fro' here. Yon's t' best parlour window wheer t' light wor burnin' when Taffendale cam' at ten o'clock. Aye, he were wi' her in theer a good four hours, an'—"
Perris had walked close behind Pippany as they entered the granary, and he was still closer as Pippany leaned into the window-place, thrusting his fingers through the slats. And suddenly, obeying an uncontrollable impulse, he lifted his hands, and, seizing Pippany by the throat, twisted him round and threw him on his back across a pile of wheat which had been emptied on the floor of the granary at a recent threshing. And Perris, conscious now of no other desire than to kill, fell heavily upon his victim, his hands tightly clutching the man's gullet, and slowly and surely squeezing the life out of him in a grip which never relaxed. He gave no attention to the convulsive struggles of the body beneath him, to the kicking of the legs, the frantic beatings and tearings of the arms and hands: all that he knew was that he had his man by the throat, and that he must hold on there until all was quiet. It seemed scarcely a minute before the last unconscious struggle faded into a mere movement, a tremor which ran through the body and shivered into his own; but when the limbs relaxed and the eyelids slowly dropped across the bulging eyes he still held on, pressing his long, sinewy fingers more tightly into the dead man's throat. And the granary grew so quiet, so silent, that the grey rat put its head out of the hole in the corner, and Perris saw its black eyes gleaming like tiny sparks of fire in the gloom.
He got up at last, and unconsciously wiped away the flecks of white froth that had gathered on his lips. He lifted his right hand higher and brushed off the sweat from his forehead; then he looked at both hands curiously as if he expected to see something on them. And as if they were numb, or hurt him, he began to rub them together. All this time his eyes strayed anywhere but to the body which lay twisted up on the heap of yellow wheat at his feet; when he finally turned to it, there was a look of curiosity and speculation in his face. He stretched out his foot and touched it gingerly with the point of his boot. Something in the contact made him start, and he looked round about him with a quick, searching glance. The grey rat, watching him stealthily, vanished affrighted into the blackness behind it.
Perris's glance lighted on a pile of old sacks which lay on the further side of the granary. He went over and tore the pile apart; returning to the body, he dragged it across the floor into the shadow and covered it with the sacks. Then, taking up a broom, he carefully swept the boards clear of the grains of wheat which had been scattered broadcast in the brief struggle; there was a deep depression in the heap itself, and he smoothed it over with the head of the broom. And just as the sun sank behind the ridge of the house he went down from the granary and entered the door which he had left open only half-an-hour previously.
Some instinct made Perris go to the sink in the kitchen and wash his hands, and as he washed and dried them he again looked at them with strange inquisitiveness. When they were dried he thrust them into his pockets; one hand encountered the key which Rhoda had handed to him before she set out for the chapel. With another instinctive notion Perris went over to the cupboard in the parlour in which his wife kept the whisky, and, taking out the bottle, helped himself to a stiff dram. Something told him, as he slowly drank it, that there was no fear of his getting drunk that night—not all the whisky in the world would have made him drunk. And, setting the glass down on the table in the house-place, he took his pipe from the mantelpiece, and filling it from the old leaden tobacco-box which stood on a shelf by his easy-chair, he lighted it with a coal from the fire, and began to smoke as calmly as if nothing had happened. The tract which the preacher had given him just before leaving for the chapel lay on the table where Perris had thrown it, and he picked it up and read some paragraphs of it between his gulps of the whisky-andwater. The tract was all about the terrors of hell; he began to wonder in vague fashion if Pippany Webster was already experiencing them.
It was dusk by that time, and Perris knew that there was work before him, but he finished his drink and his pipe leisurely. When both were done, he knocked the ashes out of the pipe and put the whisky bottle away, before going outside the house and turning the corner into a strip of neglected ground which lay beneath the gable end. It was neither garden nor orchard, though an apple-tree shaded it and neglected gooseberry bushes grew rank in it. Once upon a time some former tenant of the Cherry-trees had conceived the notion of sinking a well there, and had penetrated into the soil to a considerable depth, only to give up the attempt. The cavity so made had never been filled up; its mouth was protected by rough planking; over the planking there had stood for the past year a derelict reaping-machine, one of the many ancient wrecks which had congregated about the farmstead. Perris looked at it musingly as he stood beneath the apple-tree in the rapidly gathering gloom. It would be easy to move; it would be easy to move two or three of the rotting planks on which it stood; the unfinished well beneath them would do well enough for Pippany Webster's grave. But the darkness must come first.
Perris knew that there was no fear of interruption. Few people ever came by the Cherry-trees at night; if they did, you could hear their footsteps on the road before they were anywhere near. The desolate bit of ground was thickly shielded from the lane which ran behind it; in the darkness