"Oh, gravy--no! He's a trainer, not a slosh-bucket. I pay him eighteen hundred a year and give him a cottage besides." "Married man or a single one?" "Single. A widower. About forty. Lost his wife two years ago. Rather thought he was going to take another one shortly, from the way things looked. But of late he and Maggie McFarland don't seem, for some reason or another, to be hitting it off together so well as they did." "Who's Maggie McFarland, please?" "One of the dairymaids. A little Scotch girl from Nairn who came into service at the Abbey about a twelvemonth ago." "H'm! I see. Then the filly isn't the only 'Highland Lassie' in the case, it would seem. Pardon? Oh, nothing. Merely a weak attempt to say something smart, that's all. Don't suppose that Maggie McFarland could by any possibility throw light upon the subject of that pail of water, do you, Major?" "Good lud, no! Of course she couldn't. What utter rot. But see here--come to think of it now, perhaps _I_ can. It's as like as not that he wanted it to wash himself with before he went over to the shoer's at Shepperton Old Cross with Chocolate Maid. I forgot to tell you, Mr. Cleek, that ever since Dawson-Blake made that attempt to buy him off, Farrow became convinced that it wouldn't be safe to leave Highland Lassie unguarded night or day for fear of that cad's hirelings getting at her in some way or another, so he closed up his cottage and came to live in the rooms over the filly's stable, so as to be on the spot for whatever might or might not happen at any hour. He also bought a yapping little Scotch terrier that would bark if a match fell, and kept it chained up in the place with him. When the discovery of the filly's disappearance was made that dog was found still attached to its chain, but as dead as Maria Martin. It had been poisoned. There was a bit of meat lying beside the body and it was literally smothered in strychnine." "Quite so. Keep strychnine about the place for killing rats, I suppose?"