Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 21, No. 115, June 1953

The God of the Hills by Melville Davisson Post

We are often ashed the question: “Which is the best book of detective stones ever written?” And after more than a century of the modem form, the answer remains the same. As G. K. Chesterton once wrote: “I do not think that America has ever lost that great Challenge Cup won long ago by one of her first literary champions; or rather designed by him with a craftsmanship that was entirely original... In other words, I do not think that the standard set by a certain Mr. Edgar A. Poe... has ever been definitely and indisputably surpassed.”

Nevertheless, it would be easier to answer the question if it were changed to “Which are the four best books of detective short stories ever written?” — as it would be easier still to nominate the 40 best.

The four best? Can there be any real doubt as to the answer? In our opinion, two were written by Americans and two by Englishmen. The very best and the most important (not always the same thing) is, of course, Edgar Allan Poe’s TALES, containing the three immortal stories about Dupin; and second to Poe’s TALES, by an American writer, is Melville Davisson Post’s UNCLE ABNER. The best and most important British book of detective short stories also, in our opinion, admits of no disagreement — surely it is Arthur Conan Doyle’s THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES; and second to that masterwork, by a British author, is G. K. Chesterton’s THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN.

As we once said in QUEEN’S QUORUM (of beloved memory): “These four books are the finest in their field — the crème du crime; they are an out-of-this-world target for future detective-story writers to take shots at — but it will be like throwing pebbles at the Pyramids”...

Now, all the Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Father Brown short stories are known, and it has long been believed that the eighteen Uncle Abner stories, included in the only volume ever published about the “protector of the innocent and righter of wrongs,” represent all the stories Melville Davisson Post ever wrote about his famous Jeffersonian squire. That one and only volume first appeared in 1918, and to the best of our knowledge it is the only book of detective short stories which has not only been kept in print all these years but has never been taken out of its original edition — no, there has never been a “cheap” reprint of the Uncle Abner book.

But what is not generally known is that nearly ten years after Uncle Abner made his debut between covers, his creator wrote another series of tales about that stalwart, rugged “voice and arm of the Lord.” This new series included three short stories, and we are happy to inform you that EQMM has been given the extra-special privilege (and we use the adjective advisedly) of printing these three tales for the very first time since they originally appeared in “The Country Gentleman” in 1927.

Imagine, three “new” Uncle Abner stories! Only three other ’tec triples could match or top that — three new tales of Dupin (although we would settle for one), three new adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or three new innocent intuitions of Father Brown...

Here, then, is the first of the “new” Uncle Abner stories — one of the finest in the entire saga — and bearing the perfect title for a murder investigation by that grand old Virginia gentleman and biblical scholar...

Abner used to say that one riding on a journey was in God’s hand.

He never knew what lay before him; death standing in the road, invisible, as before the prophet; or a kingdom as in the case of Saul. One set out with his little intention, and found himself a factor in some large affair.

It is certain that my uncle had no idea of what he would come into when he rode on this early summer morning to Judge Bensen’s house. It was some distance through the hills and he traveled early, with, the dawn. He wished an hour with Bensen before the judge rode in to the county seat; for it was in the court term, and Bensen was the circuit judge.

It was a custom remaining in Virginia after the dominion of King George had passed.

The circuit judges were persons of property and distinction. They traveled on their circuits, holding their courts here and there about the country. There would be a group of counties in a circuit. And the county seat would take its name, not infrequently from the fact that it was the domicile of these circuit courts. One finds the name remaining — Culpepper Court House, and the like.

Land was the evidence and insignia of distinction in Virginia.

One’s importance was measured by his acres.

Every man who would command the attention of his fellows stood on an estate in lands. Judge Bensen lived some miles from the county seat. He had got a thousand acres from his father, and added to it. He had never married. He lived alone, with Negro servants, in their whitewashed quarters, at some distance from his ancient house. His earnings and his salary from the state went to the purchase of new lands.

He had introduced the Hereford, and turning aside from the customs of the men about him, he bred young cattle, instead of fattening the beef bullock for the market. It happened then that Bensen’s young cattle were not easily to be equaled. If one bought from him one got a drove of bullocks of one type, with no mongrel to be sold off to the little trader. Bensen had 200 young cattle — stockers, as they were called — for sale. And my uncle went, early, on this summer morning to see the drove; and to buy the cattle if he could, before Bensen set out for his court — on his horse with his legal papers in his saddle bags.

It was scarcely daylight when Abner descended into the long valley that extended north to the county seat, and in which lay the Bensen lands. At the foot of the hill where the road entered the valley he came on a man sitting his horse in the road. It was early, an hour before the sun, and there was a vague mist in this lowland.

The man and the horse looked gigantic.

Beyond them through an avenue of trees was the heavy outline of a house, still dark, from which the life within it had not yet awakened to the new day.

The whole earth was dry and the road bedded down with dust. My uncle was almost on the man before he knew him. It was Adam Bird, a traveling preacher of the hills, on his gray mare. The big old man was sitting motionless in his saddle looking up through the avenue of maples toward the shadowy house. He did not hear my uncle’s horse in the soft dust until it was nearly on him. His hands lay on the pommel of his saddle and his face was lifted like one in some deep reflection.

He called out when he saw my uncle.

“Abner,” he said, “do you see that house.”

He did not pause for a reply from Abner nor for any formality of salutation. He went on, and directly, as though he merely uttered now aloud the thing that was passing in his mind.

“Caleb Greyhouse lived there until the devil took him. He married Virginia Lewis — for a woman when she is young will be a fool. She is long dead but she left a daughter that is a Lewis too. Not a Greyhouse, by the mercy of God! And now Abner,” and he brought one of his big hands, clenched, down on the pommel of the saddle, “these accursed judges are going to dispossess her of her inheritance!”

My uncle knew what the man meant. It was common knowledge. Caleb Greyhouse had left a will written some years before, when the girl was young, leaving his estate, houses and lands, to his daughter, with a bequest to his brother who was to be the guardian and administrator of it. It had been written by Coleman Northcote, one of the best lawyers in Virginia, and so remained, until the girl had grown up. Then, when she had fallen in love, and wished to marry the son of a neighbor with whom Greyhouse had quarreled over a few acres of ridge land, the irascible old man had added a codicil to the will giving the whole estate to his brother, and no dollar and no acre to the girl.

The case was before the circuit court, now sitting, for the girl had got a sort of lawyer, and brought a suit.

But she had no money and no case.

Northcote had written the will only too accurately, with precise care for every technical detail. The codicil added by Greyhouse followed the form in Mayo’s Guide. It was written and signed by the testator and contained no legal flaw. There seemed nothing that any court could do. Nevertheless, Bensen had called in a judge from a neighboring circuit to sit with him and decide the case. The case was before the judges. And it was the act of these judges and the case before them that moved the traveling preacher of the hills.

“Did Bensen decide the case?” replied my uncle.

“He did not,” said Bird, “but the judge with him clamored to decide it and have done, for he wished to go back to his circuit. Bensen delayed a little for he had a plan of his own about this thing. He said he would write an opinion and they would decide today. But it was an abominable pretension, Abner. They will dispossess the girl... unless the Lord God Almighty moves somewhere in this thing.”

Again his big hand descended on the pommel of his saddle, as though he pounded the timber of a pulpit.

“And He will move in it! It is so written in The Book. If the widow and the orphan cry to me I will surely hear their cry.”

He brought his big hand up and over his face and his voice descended into a lower note.

“She came to me and said, ‘Uncle Adam, will you pray for me to win my case.’ And I said I will not pray; for I will not supplicate the Lord God Almighty to do justice. I will call His attention to this wrong.... And I stood up and cried to Him! And the word of the Lord came to me. And I saddled my horse, and rode down here and called Bensen out. He came shuffling with his little lawyer talk. It was the law. He had no discretion. He could not help the wrong of it. And besides I was in contempt of his court to talk with him about the case. In contempt of his court, Abner!”

And again the old man made his powerful dramatic gesture.

“I, the servant of God, in contempt of his court when I protested against a wrong!... I told Bensen that he was in contempt of God’s court, and that if he went forward with this injustice Jehovah would include him in the damnation that followed after it.”

He paused and looked my uncle in the face.

“For Bensen, Abner, is not guiltless in this thing. He will profit by it. He has coveted these lands as we all know and tried to purchase them. Old Caleb Greyhouse would not sell. But this brother will sell. And Bensen will get the lands he covets.”

And again the old man returned to his dramatic vigor.

“And he shall not escape the damnation that followed Ahab the King of Samaria; because he takes the land he covets through the act of another.

“The writing of clerks and the seals of courts shall not bring it to him guiltless, even as the writing of Jezebel and the sealing thereof did not bring the lands that he coveted to Ahab guiltless... I go now, Abner, as Elijah went to the King of Samaria! And if he say like that other, ‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?’ I will answer, I have found thee!”

He made a great sweeping gesture and turned his horse north in the valley. He rode as though he rode alone in the vague mist that lifted from the lowland and hung above the fields; a thin gray smoke screen spreading over like a blanket.

The old man had not asked whither my uncle rode nor to what end.

He went like one on some tremendous mission, alone.

Abner followed. The circuit rider had brought a new element into this affair. A gain to Bensen at the end of it that my uncle had not considered. But now that the point was touched on he remembered. It was common knowledge that it was a covetous intent with Bensen to extend his lands; to add a field. He had endeavored to buy the Greyhouse tract. And it was the truth that while Caleb Greyhouse would not sell, this brother who took the estate under the written codicil would sell it to the last acre. He had sold all that he had received from his father as an inheritance except a few acres and a house on the highway near the Bensen residence.

There was a dissolute, a reckless strain in the man that was not in Caleb Greyhouse.

He wished to be a factor in political affairs, and lacking the confidence of the people he attached his fortunes to other men; and so he had got to be a sort of deputy about the courthouse, and a chimney-corner lawyer, with knowledge enough to thumb through the deed books searching for some defect in a title upon which he could bring a suit; or extort a blackmail.

He had a marked pride in this pretension.

In the suit before the judges on the will he appeared with much visible ostentation for himself. There was, as it happened, little peril to his case, for the girl, with no money to hire a competent attorney, had only a chimney-corner lawyer like himself. And so the case was one for judges to decide as it appeared, on its face, before them... Bensen would get the land. This Barnes Greyhouse, in funds, would try for the Assembly of Virginia. And with money he might win. There was here, as in every land, an element of the electorate that could be persuaded by a demagogue and a little money in the hand.

My uncle rode on after the old preacher, his big chestnut horse moving noiselessly in the deep dust.

But his heart was troubled.

The girl came up sharply outlined in his memory: fair-haired and slender, with the hope and the charm of the immortal morning. There was no reason why she should not go, in joy, to the youth she loved.

He was of a better family and a better blood than Greyhouse.

Because that irascible old man had quarreled with the boy’s father about some acres of stony land along a ridge line, everyone of the blood was damned. All were enemies, and endowed by, that enmity with every vice.

Old Greyhouse would have no marriage with his enemy.

He fell into a fury of wild talk at the mere mention of it. And on a certain night, heated in that fury, he had written out the codicil that divested his daughter of his estate. It was not certain that at the bottom of the man he, in fact, wished to make that alienation.

In anger, affection is sometimes over-ridden.

Perhaps if he had had time, in illness, for reflection, he would have canceled it. Blood, as the old adage said, was thicker than water when death approached and one came to pass on the material things that one had gathered together in one’s life.

But he had no such time.

Death came on him in the fields.

He had fallen, in harvest, at a stroke of sun. The farm hands carried him in. But he was already out of life. He lay for some hours in a coma, in his daughter’s arms. Once, as the field hands told, he tried to stroke her hair and make known to her something that moved vaguely in his mind.

But he had had his hour, and he was granted no extension.

What he had written, he had written.

Death would not release his hand to cancel it.

It was the old eternal story.

Men acted in their anger to do wrong, as though they had a privilege of life; as though at their wish or need, in extremity, they would be granted a stay of execution until they could set their affairs in order and adjust any wrong they had accomplished.

The day was breaking.

The fog, extended through the valley, was lifting and parting into long streamers of white mist. The hills in the distance were sharp and clear in the morning light. In a short time the sun would appear. Already in the fields the cattle were at pasture.

My uncle had come up with the traveling preacher.

And at once when the big chestnut emerged from the mist by his gray mare, the old man began to talk. He began, as before, with no introductory sentence.

“Abner,” he said, “your father lived long in this land, and he did good in the sight of the Lord and not evil. And I can name a hundred other men like him who have stood for righteousness. But in that company there is no Greyhouse. Old Caleb was the best. He was hard and mean but he was not a liar nor a thief. But this other, this Barnes Greyhouse, is the worst of an evil generation. His hands are full of evil. Did not little Benny Wilmoth, in despair, shoot himself in his house because this creature searching through the deed books found a defect in his title and brought a suit to dispossess him of his farm. It was a sort of murder, Abner!”

He thrust his clenched hand out.

“There was no law to hale Barnes Greyhouse into the court and hang him. But was he any less guilty for that lack? The hand of Virginia could not reach him. But, Abner, is he beyond God’s hand? By little twists and turns a nimble man may slip away from the law. But he will not slip away from the vengeance of God.”

His clenched hand made a great sweeping curve, as though it cleared a swathe before him.

“Abner,” he said, “I will not be silent before this outrage. I will call Bensen to his door and warn him. I have seen it in a dream. He is a party to this wrong, and the Lord will make his house like the house of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat... and this Barnes Greyhouse!” He spread out the fingers of his extended arm as in the pronouncement of a curse. “As the dogs licked up the blood of Ahab in the pool of Samaria, shall the dogs lick up his blood!... for in shame, and in blackness, and in violence shall he go out of life!”

My uncle did not reply. This old man of the hills who stood for righteousness, like all who give themselves wholly to some principle of honor, had the dignity of the thing behind him. And he was not afraid. Neither courts nor judges could overawe him.

My uncle was in a deep reflection. He knew of this matter what was current gossip in the hills. But he did not know, until this morning, the sweeping terms in which Caleb Greyhouse, in his anger, had written out the codicil to his will. It would be, he had imagined, a sort of guardianship in the brother over the girl’s estate until she came to a legal age, or some manner of a trust. With such a writing there would be hope. But with a direct bequest in terms there would be no hope.

He was in a great perplexity and his mind turned from the mission on which he came.

It was broad day now with the sun beginning to appear.

They drew near to Bensen’s house.

In the pasture by the road strolling down to water at the brook were the drove of young Hereford cattle. They were unequaled; as like in form and coloring as though they were all born of one mother, by some miracle of maternity on the same day of the year, and so reared and suckled. No cattleman of the hills could have passed that drove and not pulled up his horse to look it over, for in his mind’s eye, after that, he would have carried the model for all other young cattle in the world.

And yet my uncle did not pull up his horse.

The two men passed in silence and, making a sharp turn in the road beside some oak trees, came to Bensen’s house. They stopped in wonder. The house was open; the Negroes were hovering about as in a panic. Randolph’s gig was before the door. He came out when they appeared.

“Abner,” he said, “you are come, and I was about to send a Negro for you. Bensen is dead!

“You arrive also, Adam,” he said, “as at a direction of God. It is the house of death that you have come to, and it is one of the duties of the preacher of the Gospels to minister to the dead. Come in.”

“I will not come in,” replied the old man. “But I will get down and sit before the door, for I did not come in peace.”

But my uncle cried out astonished.

“Dead!” he echoed. “Bensen dead, what killed him?”

“Now, that,” replied Randolph, “is the mystery that I was about sending after you to solve. Bensen was killed in the night as he sat here in his library at work among his books.”

On the way in with Abner, Randolph explained the details of what had happened.

The circuit court was sitting.

The case over the will of Caleb Greyhouse was on the docket.

For some reason Bensen wished another judge to sit with him to decide the case and so had called in West from a neighboring circuit. There was no reason for this, Randolph said, for there was no ground on which to contest the will. Coleman Northcote had written it some years before. Northcote was the best chancery lawyer in Virginia, and he made no errors in a legal paper. The will was correctly drawn, signed by the testator, and witnessed as the law required.

Later, Caleb Greyhouse had added a codicil in his own handwriting, on the blank sheet of the will. The codicil followed the form in Mayo’s Guide and was signed, dated, and sealed in every feature, also as the law required.

Of course, this attack on the will broke down at once.

There was no technical error in it.

The codicil added below the will on the same sheet of foolscap was also unassailable. It followed the legal form, was written by the testator in his own hand, and signed by him.

It became thus, under the law of Virginia, a holograph will and required no witnesses.

West wanted to decide the case at once from the bench, so he could get back to his circuit. But Bensen said they would take it under advisement until morning.

That night all the Negroes about the place went to a frolic at the county seat.

They left the judge at work in his library, when they went out at dark.

In court time it was the custom of the judge to work late over his legal papers and so they had put new candles in the sticks on his table and lighted them before they left the house. They had been delayed, in setting out, and as they left the house the judge had come to the door and directed them to stop on the way and ask Barnes Greyhouse to come and see him.

The man lived not farther than a quarter of a mile along the road.

They gave the message and saw him take his hat and cane and set out.

The frolic ran late. It was well toward dawn when the servants returned.

There was no light in Bensen’s library or about the house and they naturally assumed that the judge had put out the lights and gone to bed.

In the morning when they came into the house they found the tragedy, and in terror sent for Randolph.

He found the library as the assassin had left it, for the Negroes had not gone in.

The judge had been killed as he sat before his table. He had been struck down from behind, apparently without warning. The assassin had used the poker from the fireplace. It was a terrific blow for it had crushed in the skull. The man had fallen sidewise under the table, for a second blow aimed at him had struck the table itself, leaving an indentation in the walnut wood.

The iron fire-poker lay on the floor behind the chair in which the judge had been sitting.

The deed had been done late, for the candles had burned down almost to the cup of the sticks before they had been extinquished. They had been snuffed out.

Randolph pointed out the iron poker, the mark on the walnut table, and the blood smear on the hardwood floor where the judge had fallen. Abner looked carefully about the room. And while he thus studied the situs of the crime, Randolph gave his opinion.

“This, Abner,” he said, “will be the work of some vindictive convict. Our circuit judges are always in peril from these creatures when they come back from the penitentiary. I have seen them, when they were sentenced, scowl hard at the judges and mutter what they would do in revenge when they should at length go free.

“This will be the work of such a creature. Bensen, in the counties of his circuit, will have sentenced all sorts of men for all sorts of felonies.

“But it is a peril of honor, Abner. And the one who dies from it dies in the service of his country, as though he died in battle before her enemies.”

My uncle did not reply.

But there came a voice through the open door in answer.

The voice of the old circuit rider sitting in the sun.

“He did not die in honor, Randolph. Bensen died as a dog dieth!”

Randolph made a gesture as of one who dismisses the extravagances of a child with whom he will not contend. He got out some sheets of paper and sat down at a corner of the table to make a note of the details of the tragedy, accurately as he had found them on this morning.

Abner remained standing by the table, his big hand gathered about his chin, looking at the two tall candlesticks, with their bits of candles burned down to the cups.

New tallow candles had been put in on this night. These candles would burn long, almost from the dark till morning. They had been put in new on this night, and there was only a fragment left when the assassin had snuffed them out.

It was some time before my uncle moved, then he took up the snuffers and with the sharp point lifted the bits of candle out of the cups of the candlesticks.

But he did not otherwise disturb them.

He replaced them as they had been, put down the snuffers at their place, and went over to the far corner of the room.

There lying in the corner was a thing that he had noticed but upon which he had made no comment.

It was a small fragment of wood.

At first he had thought it a chip from the table, broken off by the impact of the blow that had been directed at Bensen as he fell forward under it. But the table was walnut, and this fragment was of some dark wood of a close texture. He did not take it up, nor disturb it where it lay in the corner, but he stooped over and studied it intently.

He arose, went over to the fireplace.

He took up the iron poker and turned it about in his hand.

There was a coating of ashes on the poker, extending from the point halfway to the handle, and over this toward the point was the blood of the man who had been murdered.

Abner put the poker down and remained for some moments by the hearth.

No fire had been lighted in it on this night. But there was a heap of wood ashes where former fires had burned.

Abner looked about him.

Randolph wrote sitting at a corner of the table with his back toward him. The old circuit rider was invisible beyond the open door; the Negroes had withdrawn in frightened groups beyond the house.

There was no one to question the thing he did — for he was not yet ready to be questioned — and kneeling down on the brick hearth he put-his hand into the heap of ashes.

Then he withdrew his hand, smoothed the surface of the heap as it had been, dusted the ashes from his hand, and rose.

He went around Randolph to the door and stepped out.

It was early in the morning.

No one had arrived, for the servants when they had found Bensen dead had sent word only to Randolph, through the hills. And Abner and old Adam had come by chance.

Abner did not pause.

He went on across the grassplot to the road. He stopped there and looked carefully about.

Then he walked north in the dust of the road, in the direction of the county seat. He went slowly, pausing now and then, and retracing now and then a step. Finally he stopped, advanced, returned, and stood still.

There was a little wood of scrub oak on his right hand, and a rail fence. He crossed the fence and began to look about in this tangle of scrub oak.

It was some time, perhaps half an hour, before he got back to the house.

There was a haircloth sofa, facing toward a bookcase in a far corner of the room. Abner went past Randolph to the sofa and leaning over the back put down on it something that he had brought with him, concealed under his long coat.

He returned to the table where Randolph sat before his sheets of paper.

The man had been so taken up with what he wrote that he had not marked my uncle’s absence.

Abner put out his hand and took up, from beyond Randolph, a law book with a cracked back. It was a volume of early legal reports.

The book fell open midway of the volume where the back was cracked.

And when my uncle saw the page before him his face changed.

He read and his features hardened.

He was about to speak when the voice of a man entering from the road stopped him.

It was Barnes Greyhouse.

He was a big man with a heavy brutal face laid over with a sort of fawning geniality. He walked with a slight limp, for in some drunken brawl, at an earlier time, he had been injured.

Randolph rose as the man came in; and my uncle turned about toward the door.

But he did not move.

The man blurted out a jumble of greeting and amazed expletives at the tragedy.

“Good God!” he said. “Bensen murdered. Who could have killed him?”

My uncle did not reply.

But Randolph made a little gesture as of one who has penetrated to a meaning hidden from other men.

“It is the work of some convict that Bensen has sent to the penitentiary. Such creatures hold always a vindictive resentment against the judge; as though their punishment were his work.”

“You are right, Randolph,” said Greyhouse. “That’s the explanation!”

He uttered the words as though the conclusion could not be gainsaid, and was a pronouncement in finality. But there was a sort of eagerness in the voice and manner of the man.

My uncle spoke then.

“Greyhouse,” he said, “you were here last night.”

The man turned with a gesture of assent.

“Yes,” he said, “early in the night. The Negroes passing said Bensen wished to see me, and I walked down. But I was here for a few moments only. The judge had sent for me to say that he and West would decide the case at once when they convened in the morning, and that I should come early into the court. I left the judge as I found him, sitting at his table there, and walked home. It was early; about dark.”

“Were the candles lighted on Bensen’s table?” inquired my uncle.

“Yes,” replied the man, “just lighted, I think, as I came in; it was about dark.”

“And the candles, Greyhouse; were they new tall candles, as the Negroes say?”

“Yes, Abner,” he replied, “I can answer that. They were new tall candles for I noticed the flicker of the wick where the pointed ends had not yet caught up with the tallow.”

Abner leaned over the table and took up Randolph’s pencil.

“That is an important fact,” he said, “for fragments only of these candles were burning in the sticks when the assassin snuffed them out after the murder. I think a note should be made of your observation to confirm what the Negroes say.”

He put out his hand with the pencil in his fingers to write a line on Randolph’s memorandum. But he bore too heavily and the point of the pencil broke. He turned toward Greyhouse with the pencil in his hand.

“Lend me your knife,” he said.

The man took a penknife from his breeches pocket and handed it to my uncle. Abner opened the knife and turned back to the table. But he did not sharpen the pencil. He put down the knife and pencil on the table and stood up.

My uncle looked hard at Greyhouse.

“You think Bensen was killed, late in the night, by some vindictive assassin who slipped in behind him. Is that your belief, Greyhouse?”

“Why, yes,” he said, “that is the obvious conclusion. Here are the candles burned down to the cups and the bloody poker. It is indicated in these evidences. Bensen was murdered by some released convict who had a grudge against him, and slipping in behind killed him with the poker.”

He was interrupted by a voice; a voice big and dominant that seemed to envelop and fill up the room.

“Bensen was not killed with the poker.”

The three men turned as with a single motion of their bodies.

The old circuit rider was standing in the door. Greyhouse cried out at the words.

“How do you know that?”

The old circuit rider looked hard at the man.

“I know it,” he answered, “as God knows it.”

Then he closed his mouth and was silent.

It was my Uncle Abner that broke the silence.

“Adam is right,” he said, “Bensen was not killed with the poker, nor in the time or manner that these evidences would indicate, for they are false and set up to mislead. There is blood on this poker. But there was no blood from the fracture of the skull that killed the judge and therefore there would be no blood on the implement with which the blow was dealt. There was hemorrhage only from the dead man’s face where he lay under the table. But this poker was not there. It lay on the floor behind the chair. And consequently, it was made bloody by design.”

He paused and turned toward the table.

“But this,” he said, “was not the first thing that puzzled me. The first thing was the aspect of these candlesticks. If new tallow candles had burned down in them to the cups, the shafts of the sticks would have been fouled over with dripping grease. They were not so fouled. The shafts of the candlesticks were clean as you see them. How could that happen? The wicks of the bits of candle had been snuffed out. That was clear. But how could the candles, have burned down to these bits, and there follow no drip of tallow?

“There was a reason. And I found that reason.”

He took up the iron snuffers and with their sharp point lifted the bits of candles out of the cups of the sticks. The explanation was apparent. The candles had been cut off with a knife.

There was silence and he continued:

“What had become of the candles? I searched the room here. I found a certain thing but not the candles.”

He made a gesture toward a distant corner; and went on:

“I looked again at the poker. It had a coating of wood ashes on it, as though it had been thrust into the heap yonder in the fireplace. Thrust in before it had been dipped into Bensen’s blood, for the coating of ashes was underneath the blood... Then I found the candles.”

He crossed the room with long strides, seized the poker, thrust it into the heap of ashes in the fireplace, and raked out the two long candles, cut off at their tips.

He put down the poker and stood up.

“The whole thing was clear now. Bensen had been killed early in the night when the candles were hardly lighted, and with some implement other than this poker; by one who had acted on a sudden determination to thus kill; and after the act endeavored to falsify events. He cut off the candles and snuffed them out. He made a hole in the ashes with the poker and concealed them and then, remembering that an implement must be found, had thought of the poker in his hand, and dipping it in the man’s blood laid it on the floor behind the chair.”

My uncle turned toward Grey-house.

“Greyhouse,” he said, “you are the one who came here early in the evening!”

The features of the man sagged and sweated. But there was a certain courage in him.

“Abner,” he cried, “you go mad with your neat little conclusions. Why should I wish Bensen’s death. I of all persons would wish his life; for today he and West would decide this will case in my favor.”

Again the room reverberated with a voice that filled it. Again the old circuit rider spoke.

“Greyhouse,” he said, “you are a liar!... I saw this thing in a dream; not all, but a fragment of it. I saw you and Bensen in this room, in anger. He beat a book, opened on the table, with his clenched hand and, from behind, you advanced on him, with something in your hand... not the poker, for it was setting against the chimney. You are a liar!”

The big accused creature wavered.

And Abner spoke, when the old man had ended.

“Yes, Greyhouse,” he said, “you are a liar. I understand the whole thing to the end, although I have had no part in Adam’s vision. That which was confused and hidden is now disclosed and clear. Bensen coveted these lands and he undertook to force you to a sale; a sale that would be a sort of dividing of the loot.”

He crossed to the table and opened the volume of Virginia reports at the page where it fell apart from the broken back.

“Look!” he said. “Look, Randolph. Here on this page is the syllabus of a decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia, holding that a will and its codicil must be uniform to be valid. It cannot be half in one form and half in another. If the body of the will is written by someone other than the decedent and signed and witnessed, then the codicil must be so written and signed and witnessed.

“I understand it. I understand it clearly to the end... Bensen found this case last night and he sent for Barnes Greyhouse and held the case over him like a club to force a sale of these lands to him at some little price. He must take the price or Bensen would bring in the case today. And so they quarreled, and Bensen beat the book for emphasis, breaking the back under his clenched hand... And so Barnes Greyhouse killed him, knowing that West had no knowledge of this case and would decide in favor of the will, and the girl, with no money, could not take it to a higher court!”

There was utter silence. Then my uncle went on.

“Where is your cane, Greyhouse?”

The man did not reply, but his baggy face began to tremble.

“I will answer for you,” continued Abner. “Listen, Greyhouse. I went over your track in the dust of the road. It was a clear track and beside it, also in the dust, was the round imprint of the ferrule of your cane. It was all along beside your tracks as you came here from your house, but on your return it was only to be seen beside your tracks for a certain distance. At the field of scrub oaks, on the right of the road, I could no longer find it. What did that mean, Greyhouse? It meant that at this point you had thrown the cane away... And why did you throw it away? Because you discovered, there, on your way from this murder, that the cane with which you had killed Bensen had suffered an injury that you might be called on to explain. Look, I will show you, for I found it in the scrub-oak wood by the roadside.” He took up the cane from where it was hidden by the sofa and presented it to the man. It was a big heavy crook-handled cane of black wood like teak, and a split-off fragment at the turn of the crook was missing.

“Look at it, Greyhouse,” he cried. “Look at it! A piece at the turn of the crook is missing, split off when the cane struck the table, under the powerful blow that you aimed at Bensen when he went down out of the chair. And that piece of it is yonder in the corner of the room.”

He crossed with great strides, picked up the fragment of wood, and placed it on the crook of the cane.

“Look, Greyhouse, how the piece fits!” He made a great gesture.

“There is other evidence against you. Why, sir, it cries like the blood of Abel... your knife, there on the table, has tallow on the blade where you cut the candles!”

Panic was on the trapped man and he bolted through the open door.

But his foot tripped at the sill and he fell headlong outside, on the flag-paved path. His head struck a fragment of sharp curb and a thin trickle of blood flowed out. Then he got staggeringly on his feet to escape. But my uncle overtook him and the Negroes hurried up to help pin him down.

In the confusion as they drew near, the two hounds hovering about them paused and began to lick the blood where it had trickled on the curb.

The old circuit rider — sitting motionless in the sun, his white head uncovered, his big body, clothed in its rusty-colored homespun, filling up the chair — put out his hand and pointed to the thing.

It was the fulfilling of the prophecy.

As the dogs licked up the blood of Ahab in the pool of Samaria, so shall the dogs lick up his blood.