Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1907-01-12 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

CHAPTER 111. For a moment neither of us spoke, but stood, staring at the stationmaster. The scene is stamped on my recollection. The painted palings fencing the platform from the macadamised courtyard outside the station, the dreary beat of the sleet, the muddy road tailing down a hill to meet the main highway, the brown thatch of cottages beyond showing between the bare boles of trees, the open-mouthed, bewildered stationmaster, the thin face, livid beneath its bronze, of Captain Fulton—these things are all linked indelibly with Hitchenswell Station. I think we both felt a certain mental numbness. The news was so startling, all the more startling by reason of our previous vague unquiet. Captain Fulton was the first to recover himself. I began to understand him better from that moment. Although I will not deny that he had somewhat infected me with his uneasiness and forebodings, and his half-acknowledged belief n the family legend, I oonfess that underneath I had felt a growing contempt for him. It was, of course, unreasoning. Possibly contempt is the wrong word—l certainly do not mean that there was any active feeling. But I did say to myself that here was a man fresh from perils and dangers sufficient to daunt a man of courage, the victim of a vague superstition. In some manner, standing in this deserted little Devon station, with the sleet in my face, the queer, country silence, the drowned, deserted, dreary landscape, and, above all, face to face with an unfaltering, if ashamed, credence of the superstition in the stationmaster, the belief did not seem so absurd. Arid Captain Fulton, confronted by an actual fact, startling as it was, was the first to recover his wits. Do you mean that my uncle has been murdered?" lie demanded, sharply. If so be as you'm nervy to Squire Fulton, us do mean he's dead." "How dead?' "That us don't know." "Was he murdered?"  "He come by his death nigh to Cranby Chapel. You'm a stranger here, siinrninly. Leastways, Us have never seen you afore, and us have lived here twenty year, and the rest to Over Tracey, only five mile away. But, though you'm a stranger, you'm, a Fulton. Yesterday was the twenty-third of February." "You're thinking of that old wives' tale. That iB crass nonsense!"  Ile said it bravely with his lips, but if I knew my man, there was a strong belief in. the "crass nonsense" in his heart,  "That may be—so-,--oTi7l.- mayn't. Old wives' tales or no, yesterday was the twenty-third of February. No one can deny that. If they can, let 'em. And .yestorday night, being the twenty-third of February, Squire Sta.nley Fulton come by his death. And l'm sorry, l'm main sorry. He was a genelman out and out, and a gude 'un." Captain Fulton remained silent. That he was not intimately acquainted with his uncle I knew, but to hear suddenly of the death of a near relative, however little known personally, is pitiful enough. And Fulton was on the eve of a visit to the dead man.  " Was the death from natural causes?" I asked. "That us don't know," the stationmaster answered. "Just afore you come in us heard from Mrs Stimmins that Squire Fulton was found dead nigh to Crumb,- Chapel." He returned again to this startling fact of proximity to the chapel. " Ur was so shook ur could give us no definite perticlars. Dr. Fulton ha a been to see the corpse."  "Dr. Fulton?" inquired ray friend. "