Finally the doctor came out from the rectory,
accompanied by the magistrate, and announced to the waiting
villagers that their venerable pastor had disappeared under
circumstances which left no doubt that he had met his death at
the hand of a murderer. The peasants listened in shuddering silence,
the men pale-faced, the women sobbing aloud with frightened children
hanging to their skirts. Then at the magistrate's order, the crowd
dispersed slowly, going to their homes, while a messenger set off
to the near-by county seat.
It was a weird, sad Easter Monday. Even nature seemed to feel the
pressure of the brooding horror, for heavy clouds piled up towards
noon and a chill wind blew fitfully from the north, bending the
young corn and the creaking tree-tops, and moaning about the
straw-covered roofs. Then an icy cold rain descended on the village,
sending the children, the only humans still unconscious of the fear
that had come on them all, into the houses to play quietly in the
corner by the hearth.
There was nothing else spoken of wherever two or three met together
throughout the village except this dreadful, unexplainable thing
that had happened in the rectory.
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