through that door--fairly flung through it! God!--do you
think I could mistake my own eyes?"

"Did you see who flung him?" asked Bryce.

"No; I saw a hand--just for one second, as it might be--by the
edge of the doorway," answered Varner. "I was more for
watching him! He sort of tottered for a second on the step
outside the door, turned over and screamed--I can hear it
now!--and crashed down on the flags beneath."

"How long since?" demanded Bryce.

"Five or six minutes," said Varner. "I rushed to him--I've
been doing what I could. But I saw it was no good, so I was
running for help--"

Bryce pushed him towards the bushes by which they were
standing.

"Take me to him," he said. "Come on!"

Varner turned back, making a way through the cypresses. He
led Bryce to the foot of the great wall of the nave. There in
the corner formed by the angle of nave and transept, on a
broad pavement of flagstones, lay the body of a man crumpled
up in a curiously twisted position. And with one glance, even
before he reached it, Bryce knew what body it was--that of the
man who had come, shyly and furtively, to Ransford's door.