“Damn this crazy Southern mining country!” he rapped out. “Rucker is right: I believe it’s peopled with escaped lunatics fresh from Bedlam! You’ve got a theory, Poictiers; I can see it in your eye. Put it in words. Whom do you suspect?” “Small minds suspect: larger ones reason calmly,” said the golden youth in mild irony. “The thing for us to do first is to establish a few identities, if we can. Who were these late-in-the-evening visitors? Let’s take them in their natural order; first come, first served. Rucker seems to have had a fair eye-shot at the man in a soft hat and long-tailed coat. Doesn’t his description of the man’s clothes and figure throw at least a suggestion into you?” Tregarvon frowned. “You’ve got Hartridge on the brain,” he retorted. “You can travel anywhere in the South and still find plenty of men who wear soft hats and full-skirted Prince Alberts.” “Yes; quite so. But we have met only one on Mount Pisgah, thus far, and his name is William Wilberforce Hartridge. And if we take Mr. Hartridge for the fist-shaking gentleman, the next step--the identity of the lady--is simplified.” “I don’t see it,” Tregarvon objected sourly. “You mean you won’t see it. What woman, from Highmount, would be most likely to be Mr. Hartridge’s companion on a moonlight evening drive? Don’t let your prejudices, or rather your prepossessions, make a blind mule of you, Vance.” “I suppose you mean that the woman was Richardia Birrell. It doesn’t necessarily follow, and I don’t believe it.” “It isn’t so dreadfully hard to believe. There is no reason why she shouldn’t go driving with the professor of mathematics, if she feels like it. Neither is there anything especially culpable in the fact that she walked down here with him when he came to shake his professorial fist at your drilling-machine. When you have cooled down sufficiently, we’ll go and see if my little primary guess won’t prove out.” “I’m cool enough,” was the answer to this; and together they went to seek the proof. The buggy tracks in the damp sand of the little-used road were not hard to trace, and there were places where the hoof-prints of the horse which had been driven toward Highmount were clean-cut and distinct. Carfax was a spoiled son of fortune only in his affectations. Beneath the carefully cultivated fopperies there was a keen, active mentality which rarely missed its mark and never fumbled. He made pencil sketches of the hoof-prints on the back of an old letter in passing, and it was he, and not Tregarvon, who noted the single peculiarity in the horse’s shoeing; a missing corner from the toe-calk on the left hind foot.