Now, I liked Mr. Ablethorpe, but after he had wrestled like that with his conscience, just to tell me that he knew nothing about the matter--well, I could have gone back and felled him. Why, his old conscience couldn't have made more fuss if he had known all about the murder--the hiding of the body--of a score of bodies, indeed. But then, with consciences, a fellow like me can't tell. It's like love, or sea-sickness, or toothache. If a fellow has never had them, he's no judge of the sufferings of those who have. And that's what I always say to people when I hear of some new caper of the Hayfork Parson, or Rev. De la Poer, or any of that lot. "It's conscience," I say. "It takes them like that. It's uncommon, I grant, in Breckonside, but they've got it. So take a back seat, boys, and wait till the flurry's over!" I am not going to go into detail of the search for my father, because what with the search for Harry Foster, and my father, and all that is yet to come, the book would just be all about folk trying to find out the mystery of the house on the farther side of the Deep Moat, and coming back, as they say in Breckonside, with their finger in their mouth. Briefly, then, everybody searched and searched, but all to no purpose. Mad Jeremy was proved to have been miles away, and Mr. Stennis safe in Edinburgh, dining with his lawyer. He came home as full of rage as he could stick, and he threatened to bring actions for "effraction" and breaking open of lock-fast places, trespass, damage to property, and I don't know what all. But none of these things came to anything. He threatened, but did not perform. And as for me, in those days I had enough to do with my mother, who had fallen into a frail state of both mind and body--she who had been so robust. And if it had not been for Elsie, who took care of her, coming to our house to do it, and even biding the night, I don't know what would have become of my mother. You see, she had never believed that anything serious had really happened to my father, or that he was dead. And when any one tried to argue her out of it, she said: "Tell me, then, who it was that let the mare into the yard?" And we dared not give her the answer that was uppermost in all our minds--that it was the murderer who had done it with my father's master-key. I did not see much of Elsie, though she was in the same house with me, for I had the business to attend to, just as if my father was there--to take his place, I mean. Because I knew that he would wish it, so that if he came back he would be proud not to be able to put his finger on anything, and say, "This has suffered in your hands, Joe!"