"What would you say you're after?" the man enquired.

"Who's that?" Mr Rock asked, knowing full well, but put out by the brutal question.

"I know what I know," Adams said. He spoke in a higher voice than usual.

Mr Rock straightened his back to wave a hand at the cloud of gnats which rose and fell before his eyes. He reached for a handkerchief to clean the glasses, and, when he had done so, searched from where he stood for the still invisible Adams, while he put a finger between his collar and wet skin.

"Have you seen my sow?" he demanded.

"She's been gone this long time since," the forester replied. There was a pause. Mr Rock felt hotter. Really, amongst the reeds it is intolerably warm, he said to himself. And what an idiotic situation.

"Where are you, man?" he insisted.

"Where I can remain unseen," the fellow answered.

"Then come out and have done," Mr Rock sternly said, turning slow on his heels, in a circle.

"I've as much right as the next man to ask my question and receive the answer," the man replied. "I'm not the one single one round here," he said. "Ask this, ask that, 'Adams, where were you?', 'Adams what're you doing', "Ow about your work, Adams?' Well then, perhaps you can tell me, Mr Rock," and he stressed the Mr. "What might you be after?"

The old man was facing the withy again. The insulting lunatic could only be hidden away there. So Mr Rock said not a word.

"I've kept me eyes open this long time to what goes on around," Adams continued bitterly, after a pause. "I may not be educated but I wasn't born yesterday, not by many a year. I saw the shape of things right enough this morning when you asked after my cottage. You people, you, and your granddaughter, and her boy," he said, "you're as mean as wood ashes, every one."

He waited for an answer but the old man said no word just stood to wipe at his face with a handkerchief in a palsied hand.

A gnat got up Adams' nose so that he sneezed. He scratched at his leg. Then, beside himself, he went on, "You never intended to give me the wire," he accused. "I saw through that like I look out of my windows, it was clear as day you sought how you might get me shunted, shift it over on to me, while up at the house as they're scheming to lay their hands on your place. Likely enough you or your girl done away with 'er yourselves, for a dark purpose. Because I tell you, from now on you and me is strangers of another country, so we don't pass the time of day even. You and me speak a different language, Mr Rock. You and your sort." For the last few words, Adams had dropped his voice. The old man could not entirely catch what had been said. So it was with intent to make the fellow ridiculous that he asked, "Lose the fort?"

The forester began to laugh. "Booze the port" he echoed, to make a mock of his adversary. "Ah, and after every meal I don't doubt," and slapped his thighs. "Living like a lord," he went on. "There you are, back at your lies once again," he yelled. "Makin' out you're better nor the rest of us." He dropped his voice. "Like enough you've forgotten the spot you dug the hole, and you're back to see where you can recollect."

"It was the State gave me my place," Mr Rock, who had not meant to answer these bumpkin idiocies, found himself stung to reply about his general position. This mention of the all-powerful sobered Adams.

There was another silence.

"Time I went," Mr Rock muttered, outraged and confused.

"Ah, slink off like you crept out," Adams said, in as low a voice. "But you won't come up on me unbeknownst, not with me on my guard."

The old man waited. It was intolerable. His granddaughter and he had fallen so low that any lunatic could thus address them, and stay unmolested. He blamed it on Miss Edge and the Baker woman.

"I saw," Adams started once more, but not so violently, "I seen you hold your tryst with that shiner and old Edge. The moment I set eyes on you I knew the game. Put it all on a working man who's alone in this world," he said, tears in his voice.

"For all my weak eyesight I only noticed Baker," Mr Rock announced with triumph.

"Which don't alter facts, that you never come upon what you sought," Adams replied. "It takes more'n glasses to see round your kind," he said.

"I'm an older man than you, Adams," Mr Rock answered at last. "Civility between neighbours is worth a coal fire in the grate, any time."

Conscious that he had hardly, perhaps, said all he might, and with a feeling that he had not heard the last in consequence, Mr Rock walked off and out. For his ludicrous position was, he realised, that whether or no he had been elected, he must hasten to curry favour with those two mewing harlots up above for fear they might listen to this madman's ravings.

"Get on off out," he heard Adams yell after him.

When Baker arrived back in the Sanctum, she found Edge ready to take over.

"I was just going up to change," Miss Edge greeted the lady.

"I know," her colleague said, a little out of breath. "It took longer than I thought. I met the police sergeant with Mr Rock."

Miss Edge accepted the statement without comment.

"In many ways," she said, "I think this has been the most miserable day of my life."

"Why dear? There's nothing fresh, then? No bad news, I mean?" She had been thinking that laugh she heard behind her must have been imaginary. Now she was not so sure.

"No, on the whole, no," Edge comforted her. "But the intentional stupidity, Baker, is what I find so fatiguing. Take Marchbanks, now. Merode definitely admitted, only a moment ago, she had told the woman she was a sleepwalker."

"Well," Miss Baker said, and forgot that laugh once more. "It lets the child out to a certain extent, doesn't it?"

"Yes, until we go further into all this," Edge replied, with a weary gesture. "Up to a point, yes," she agreed. "But wait until we know more tomorrow, Baker. We may have a day of decision there. I dread it."

"Marchbanks is so experienced she's hardly likely to have made a mistake over a man," Miss Baker assented. "Although she may have jumped to the obvious conclusion. But we are at one, now, over the dance, aren't we? It must proceed. In the present state of our knowledge at all events. We may even laugh at each other, dear, within the next fifteen hours, at having been so worried and upset."

"I feel that is hardly likely, Baker," Edge objected. "For we still may not have done all we might under the circumstances, which is no trifling matter, placed as we are. Still, I am with you that our little Tamasha shall succeed."

"Then let's not say another word now, even to one another, about what's occurred."

"But the way those two girls could, Baker? On the very day before. Our children don't get much fun here, my dear. We have to keep them pretty well to the grindstone. And then these two little wretches, if they do not merit a harsher word, to endanger the whole affair with an escapade, it is hardly credible, is it?"

The sinking sun partitioned their room into three, as it came in by three windows. Miss Edge sat shaded between the first and second, Miss Baker similarly between the second and third windows, so they addressed each other across a thick wedge of colour-bearing sunlight in which motes of dust descended, now day was done. Left of one, and to the right of the other, was a vase of azaleas that had not wilted yet, a brilliant crown, which one of the girls had saved over from the decorations to place between their desks of office. Miss Edge reached out to push this into shadow, and Baker remembered.