It was not particularly late when the hand-cart, with its uncanny burden, had passed along the sole street of the place, and several men had emerged from the Warrior Inn ostensibly to offer help, but really to know what the eccentric master of the great house was doing.

Braddock brusquely rejected these offers; but the oddly shaped mummy case, stained green, having been seen, it needed little wit for those who had caught a sight of it to put two and two together, especially as the weird object had been described at the inquest and had been talked over ever since in every cottage.

And as the cart had been seen coming out of the widow's garden, it naturally occurred to the villagers that Mrs.Jasher had been concealing the mummy.

Shortly the rumor spread that she had also murdered Bolton, for unless she had done so, she certainly--according to village logic--could not have been possessed of the spoil.

Finally, as Mrs.Jasher's doors and windows were small and the mummy was rather bulky, it was natural to presume that she had hidden it in the garden.