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Half-way down the hall there was Bunning, and Olva could see, as he passed up the room, that the man was trembling and was pressing his hands down upon the table to hold his body still. When Olva had sat down and the cheering had passed again into the cheerful hum that was customary, the first voice that greeted him was Cardillac's. "Congratulations, old man. I'm delighted."

He went on to tell how he and Bunning had found Wallingford, and of the difficulties of access to the Mayor's Parlour. "The thing is," he concluded, "how did the murderer get in, and how did he get away?" "Queer!" admitted Peppermore, scribbling fast in his note-book. "That's a nice job for the detectives. Looks like a skilfully-planned, premeditated job too "

Bunning, the coward, had done a braver thing than many more stalwart men would have cared to do. There was bravery there! Moreover, why should not Olva go? He could not sit alone in his room, his nerves would soon be too many for him. What did it matter?

He hurried inside the stone hall and went away by the stairs to the upper regions of the gloomy old place, and Bunning, with another salute, turned from him, pulled out his pipe and began to smoke again.

Take Bunning, his cheeks flushed, his body shaking, his eyes flaming, for an example. Olva, dark, motionless in his shadow, watched it all and waited for his moment. He knew that it was coming. Grimly he addressed the Shadow, now close to his very heart. "I know you. You are urging me on. This night is your business. . . . But I am fighting you still! I am fighting you still!" The moment came.

"That's a detail! it's the office I'm a-considering of. What this here free and ancient borough 'ud look like, without me, I cannot think!" He shook his head and went sadly away, and Bunning, suddenly remembering that it was about his supper-time, prepared to retreat into the room which he and his wife shared, at the end of the stone hall.

"Things can't be all right. It's gone much too far." "My dear Bunning, I've seen Craven. I've told him. I assure you that all is well." "You told him?" "Everything. That I killed Carfax he knew it, of course, long ago. He went fast asleep at the end of it." Bunning shook his head again, wearily. "It's all no good. You're saying these things to comfort me.

There were the old gabled houses, quaintly roofed and timbered; there the lace-like masonry of High Cross; there the slender proportions of Low Cross; there the mighty bulk of the great church built over the very spot whereon the virgin saint suffered martyrdom; there, towering above the gables on the north side, the well-preserved masonry of the massive Norman Keep of Hathelsborough Castle; there a score of places and signs with which Bunning had kept up a close acquaintance in youth and borne in mind when far away under other skies.

To expect a summons to death and public shame, to find Bunning. Bunning that soft, blithering, emotional, religious, middle-class maniac Bunning! "Soft-faced" Bunning, as he was called, was the man of Olva's year in whom the world at large found most entertainment.

He's been at me now for days; ever since that time he stopped me in Outer Court and asked me why I was a friend of yours. He's been coming to my room at night at all sorts of times and just sitting there and looking at me." Olva came across and touched Bunning's arm: "Poor Bunning! What a brute I was to tell you!" "He used to come and say nothing just look at me. I couldn't stand it, you know.