In place of giving me the information I was panting for, the whole town came cackling round me with comments on the organist and the sacrilege.  I turned into the ‘Fishing Smack’ inn, a likely place to get what news was to be had, and found the asthmatical old landlord haranguing some fishermen who were drinking their ale on a settle.

‘It’s my b’lief,’ said the old man, ’that Tom was arter somethink else besides that air jewelled cross.  I’m eighty-five year old come next Dullingham fair, and I regleck as well as if it wur yisterdy when resur-rectionin’ o’ carpuses wur carried on in the old churchyard jes’ like one o’clock, and the carpuses sent up to Lunnon reg’lar, and it’s my ‘pinion as that wur part o’ Tom’s game, dang ’im; and if I’d a ’ad my way arter the crouner’s quest, he’d never a’ bin buried in the very churchyard as he went and blast-phemed.’

’Where would you ’a buried ‘im, then, Muster Lantoff?’ asked a fisher-boy in a blue worsted jerkin.

’Buried ’im? why, at the cross-ruds, with a hedge-stake through his guts, to be sure.  If there’s a penny agin’ ‘im on that air slate’ (pointing to a slate hung up on the door) ’there must be ten shillins, dang ‘im.’

‘You blear-eyed, ignorant old donkey,’ I cried, coming suddenly upon him, ’what do you suppose he could have done with a dead body in these days?  Here’s your wretched ten shillings,—­for which you’d sell all the corpses in Raxton churchyard.’

And I gave him half-a-sovereign, feeling, somehow, that I was doing honour to Winifred.

‘Thankee for the money, Mister Hal, anyhow,’ said the old creature.  ’You was allus a liberal ’un, you was.  But as to what Tom could ’a dun with the carpus, I’m allus heer’d that you may dew anythink with any-think, if you on’y send it carriage-paid to Lunnon,’

I left the house in anger and disgust.  No tidings could I get of Winifred in Raxton or Graylingham.

By this time I was thoroughly worn out, and obliged to go home.  My anxiety had become nearly insupportable.  All night I walked up and down my bedroom, like a caged animal, cursing Superstition, cursing Convention, and all the other follies that had combined to destroy her.  It was not till the next day that the true state of the case was made known to me in the following manner:  At the end of the town lived the widow of Shales, the tailor.  Winifred and I had often, in our childish days, stood and watched old Shales, sitting cross-legged on a board in the window, at his work, when Winifred would whisper to me, ‘How nice it must be to be a tailor!’