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She lost her loneliness in the activity of the village industries the railroad-yards with a freight-train switching, the wheat-elevator, oil-tanks, a slaughter-house with blood-marks on the snow, the creamery with the sleds of farmers and piles of milk-cans, an unexplained stone hut labeled "Danger Powder Stored Here."
All in broad daylight; but so lonely is that spot, nothing might have been heard of it, if at the end of the week the postillion who had been bribed and threatened with terrible threats to keep his tongue from wagging, had not begun to talk. So the scene of the encounter was examined, and on one spot, carefully earthed over, blood-marks were discovered in the green sand.
Then he examined with his magnifying-glass the floor beside it, taking especial pains where the blood had trickled over the side of the bed, which was of heavy red wood handsomely carved. Inch by inch, down on his knees, carefully avoiding any touch with the stains on the floor, he followed the blood-marks over to the spot, close under the great safe, where the body had lain.
The little one was forced to run behind. Again and again she fell, and each time she was jerked up and forced to run again upon her bleeding feet, leaving rags of her garments upon the karroo-bushes and blood-marks on the stones. And at last she fell, and rose no more, showing no sign of life under the whip and the spur-rowel.
Hastings, for the first time, told the story of the blood-marks, and of two or three other supposed visions of a man, tall and stooping, with a dark sallow face, which persons working on the farm, or walking near it on the hill, had either seen or imagined. Ellesborough finally had jumped on his motor-bicycle and ridden off to the police depot at Millsborough.
But, forcing herself to be calm, she went on again: "I snatched up the pistol and fired. Then " "You hit him?" "I must have, for he screeched most horribly and pawed at his breast " "So, then, that explains the blood-marks on the floor and the great hand-print on the wall?" "Hand-print? Was there one?" "Yes; but no matter now. Go on!" "After that oh, it was too ghastly!
Black's lips at intervals had been words instead of inarticulate grunts. He was, therefore, prepared when the question did come. "Any memorial of the Etheridge case?" "Nothing but a stick with blood-marks on it. That, I'm afraid, wouldn't be a very agreeable sight for a lady's eye." "She's proof," the lawyer whispered in the officer's ear. "Let's see the stick."
They said that blood had been discovered on the grass near where the ghost had been seen, and that quite a crowd had gathered around it. They had found other blood-marks at intervals along the road, and on following the direction in which they traveled, it was found that they led straight to Drysdale's house.
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