Implications

: MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER

I



The jury returned a verdict of "Accidental death."



If there had been any traces of a struggle, I had not noticed them when

I came to the edge of the pond. There may have been marks as if a foot

had slipped. I was not thinking of evidence when I looked into the

water.



There were marks enough when the police came to investigate, but they

were the marks made by a tw lve-stone man in hobnail boots, who had

scrambled into, and out of, the pond. As the inspector said, it was not

worth while wasting any time in looking for earlier traces of footsteps

below those marks.



Nor were there any signs of violence on the body. It was in no way

disfigured, save by the action of the water, in which it had lain for

perhaps eighteen hours.



There was, indeed, only one point of any significance from the jury's

point of view, and that they put on one side, if they considered it at

all; the body was pressed into the mud.



The Coroner asked a few questions about this fact.



Was the mud very soft? Yes, very soft, liquid on top.



How was the body lying? Face downwards.



What part of the body was deepest in the mud? The chest. The witness

said he had hard work to get the upper part of the body released; the

head was free, but the mud held the rest. "The mooad soocked like," was

the expressive phrase of the witness.



The Coroner passed on to other things. Had any one a spite against the

child? and such futilities. Only once more did he revert to that

solitary significant fact. "Would it be possible," he asked of the

abashed and self-conscious labourer, "would it be possible for the body

to have worked its way down into the soft mud as you have described it

to have been found?"



"We-el," said the witness, "'twas in the stacky mooad, 'twas through the

sarft stoof."



"But this soft mud would suck any solid body down, would it not?"

persisted the Coroner.



And the witness recalled the case of a duck that had been sucked into

the same soft pond mud the summer before, and cited the instance. He

forgot to add that on that occasion the mud had not been under water.



The Coroner accepted the instance. There can be no question that both he

and the jury were anxious to accept the easier explanation.





II



But I know perfectly well that the Wonder did not fall into the pond by

accident.



I should have known, even if that conclusive evidence with regard to his

being pushed into the mud had never come to light.



He may have stood by the ash-tree and looked into the water, but he

would never have fallen. He was too perfectly controlled; and, with all

his apparent abstraction, no one was ever more alive to the detail of

his surroundings. He and I have walked together perforce in many

slippery places, but I have never known him to fall or even begin to

lose his balance, whereas I have gone down many times.



Yes; I know that he was pushed into the pond, and I know that he was

held down in the mud, most probably by the aid of that ash stick I had

held. But it was not for me to throw suspicion on any one at that

inquest, and I preferred to keep my thoughts and my inferences to

myself. I should have done so, even if I had been in possession of

stronger evidence.



I hope that it was the Harrison idiot who was to blame. He was not

dangerous in the ordinary sense, but he might quite well have done the

thing in play--as he understood it. Only I cannot quite understand his

pushing the body down after it fell. That seems to argue

vindictiveness--and a logic which I can hardly attribute to the idiot.

Still, who can tell what went on in the distorted mind of that poor

creature? He is reported to have rescued the dead body of a rabbit from

the undergrowth on one occasion, and to have blubbered when he could not

bring it back to life.



There is but one other person who could have been implicated, and I

hesitate to name him in this place. Yet one remembers what terrific acts

of misapplied courage and ferocious brutality the fanatics of history

have been capable of performing when their creed and their authority

have been set at naught.





III



Ellen Mary never recovered her sanity. She died a few weeks ago in the

County Asylum. I hear that her husband attended the funeral. When she

lost her belief in the supernal wisdom and power of her god, her world

must have fallen about her. The thing she had imagined to be solid,

real, everlasting, had proved to be friable and destructible like all

other human building.





IV



The Wonder is buried in Chilborough churchyard.



You may find the place by its proximity to the great marble mausoleum

erected over the remains of Sir Edward Bigg, the well-known brewer and

philanthropist.



The grave of Victor Stott is marked by a small stone, some six inches

high, which is designed to catch the foot rather than the eye of the

seeker.



The stone bears the initials "V. S.," and a date--no more.





V



I saw the Wonder before he was buried.



I went up into the little bedroom and looked at him in his tiny coffin.



I was no longer afraid of him. His power over me was dissipated. He was

no greater and no less than any other dead thing.



It was the same with every one. He had become that "poor little boy of

Mrs. Stott's." No one spoke of him with respect now. No one seemed to

remember that he had been in any way different from other "poor little

fellows" who had died an untimely death.



One thing did strike me as curious. The idiot, the one person who had

never feared him living, had feared him horribly when he was dead....