He stood, uncertain, in utter darkness and dirt.
Presently he struck a match, and found a tallow candle,
and, coughing away the clouds around him, he looked
round.- Jan Hunkum lay on the floor, his right hand
once more fiercely clasping the murderous iron bar ;
his eyes were closed : there was a splatter of blood all
about him.
Barend Everts knew nothing of sickness, and little of
death. His father had been shot in a poaching affray ;
his mother had died in a fit : for the rest, his pathological
experiences were confined to the animal world. When
a hare had a hole like that behind its ears it was done for.
He gently turned the old man on his back again : the
eyes were dull ; the breath had stopped. Jan Hunkum
was dead : he, Barend Everts, was somehow mixed up
with his death. The miser must have fallen — perhaps
in taking fresh aim ? — and in falling must have struck
against a comer of the chest. But what did these par-
ticulars matter ? When Government finds a man killed
and a hve man beside him, it says that the live man has

47



JAN HUNKUM'S MONEY

murdered the dead one — at least, if the live man's
poor.
There was no more to be done for Jan Hunkum.
Barend rose slowly to his feet and ran from the room.
He struck his elbow against the wall of the passage —
he struck his face against the wall of the pantry — at last
he was out of the window, out in the rain.
