For even then I felt that the key of the mystery lay there. My mother took it more quietly than we had hoped. She did not cry out, but to this day I mind the tremulous light of the candle which she carried in one shaking hand and sheltered with the other. It went quavering from her breast to her face, and then down again till it mixed with the steady shine of the stable lantern in Bob's hand. She went into the stable and looked Dapple over carefully, without, however, attempting to touch anything about the mare's trappings. "There will hae been an accident," she faltered, her tongue almost refusing its office, "your faither must have been thrown! We will all go and seek for him. We will waken the village." "But you are not fit, mother. Bide here quiet in the house--let others seek--you are never fit." "Who has my right?" she said, with a suppressed fierceness, very strange in one so kindly. "I will go out and seek for my man! No one shall hinder me!" CHAPTER XVIII THE HUNTERS OF MEN In the village of Breckonside on that December morning was to be seen a sight the like of which I never looked upon. Doors were open all up and down the street. Every window was a yellow square of light. Frighted, white-faced women looked round curtains. Children in their scanty nightgowns clung on to stair rails, and tried to look out of the open front door without taking their feet off the first-floor landing. The men of the village mustered about the police office--not because of any help poor old Constable Codling could be to them, but because the very place gave a kind of legality to their proposed doings. For this time there was no doubt in the minds of any at Breckonside. Harry Foster was a comparatively poor man, even taking into consideration the banknotes which he carried in the mail bags. But my father, Joseph Yarrow, was the richest and most powerful man in all the district--ay, as far down as East Dene itself. More than that, he had ridden to Longtown to take payment of a long outstanding debt. Bob Kingsman had heard him say so--so, for the matter of that, had I myself. It would certainly be a large sum for him to mention it twice, reticent as he was on all such matters. The road to Longtown, or back from Longtown--for it was doubtless there that he would be trapped--led over Brom Common, by the edge of Sparhawk Wood, and so on through the Slack into Scotland. On all the long road, there was only one suspected house--Deep Moat Grange. Only one man whose wealth could not be accounted for penny by penny--Mr. Stennis, the Golden Farmer. Only one nest of mysterious and dangerous folk--Mad Jeremy and his sisters. All the rest were shepherds and their little white shielings. The conclusion was clear--at least to the minds of the Breckonsiders--in, at, or about Deep Moat Grange, Joseph Yarrow, senior, was to be found--and, what was even more to the point, Joseph Yarrow's money.