He was on his feet in a moment. "That's all right," he panted, as he watched the colt career whinnying away, wreaths of smoke still clinging to his woolly coat. "He's not taken much harm." "I suppose he went in after we left," mused Boy. "And then the wind banged the door." "I don't think the wind dropped that bar," said the young man. "And I doubt if it set the shelter alight." The shed was blazing merrily, the flames devouring the tarred wood with greed. Jerry had seen a man leave the public path, cross the Paddock, and enter the shed half an hour before. "What kind of a man?" asked Silver. "Trampy, sir," replied the lad. "He got smokin' in it out of the wind," said Stanley, "and set it ablaze, and did a bolt." "After shutting the door behind him with the colt inside," commented Silver. He searched the grass on the outskirts of the shed for footmarks. Something glimmering in the dusk caught his eye. It was a wooden-handled sheath-knife. Silver picked it up and showed it to the girl. She said nothing. "Billy Bluff!" called the young man. He shoved the knife under the dog's nose. "Sik him out!" he called. "Good dorg!" Billy Bluff skirmished round and went off up the hill at score. Silver mounted and followed. The trail carried the dog up on to the Downs. He pursued it at speed and unfaltering in the dusk. Against the pale west, on the brow, the figure of a man soon came into view. Billy Bluff raced up and greeted the pedestrian effusively. Silver, pounding up behind, found himself face to face with the vicar. The dog, his task completed to his own entire satisfaction, sought applause and sympathy from the horseman. "Is that you, Mr. Haggard?" called the young man in the dusk. "Yes; I came up to have a look at the sunset." "You haven't seen that man Joses about?" "Our lurid friend," said the vicar absently. "No; and I don't want to see him just now. It's all so quiet." Boy, who had stayed behind to examine the colt, came cantering up. The dusk was drawing down apace, the earth dark about them, and seaward that window in the west pale and lovely. "Wonderful!" said Mr. Haggard, dreamily, and repeated slowly and to himself-- _Since I can never see your face, And never shake you by the hand, I send my soul through time and space To greet you. You will understand._ The riders turned away. Neither spoke for a while. "Mr. Haggard's like mother," said the girl at last. "He's got _that_." She added: "I'm glad we met him. I was very angry." "Aren't you now?" he asked. "Yes," she said, "but in a different way. It's white now. It was red then." They rode slowly off the crest amid the gorse, the lights of Putnam's burning far beneath them in the dusk. "Give me that knife, please," she said. "No." "Why not?" "I want it." "What for?" He didn't answer. "I know," she said. "To get him put away."