"Law bless you, sir! Them gals is always a-fancyin' things. They ought to have bin a-bed and asleep. No, no, sir. It wasn't any more than five-and-twenty to ten." "This gentleman stayed at `The Silver Fleece' a fortnight, you say. Now, during all that time did you notice anything strange about him?" "Well, sir, he used to go about with a little hammer, chippin' off bits o' stone from the cliffs and suchlike, and in the evenin' he'd sit in his room and write a good deal." "Did you talk with him at all on the subject of Mr Hubert Dorrien's disappearance?" "Yes, sir. I was the first to tell him of it." "Oh! And how did he seem to take it?" "Cool as a blessed cucumber, sir. And when I told him that the ghost had been seen on The Skegs, he laughed in my face outright and said it was all humbug." "Ha-ha! Of course. Thank you, Grainger. That'll do. Er--one more question. Do you know the place called Smugglers' Ladder?" "Well, sir, I've been there." "How long does it take to walk there from Battisford?" "Three-quarters of an hour." "Ah! Now, you mentioned a cliff path leading from Wandsborough. Would that lead one past Smugglers' Ladder?" "Oh, no, sir. Nowhere near it. Why, it turns inland before you come within half a mile of Smugglers' Ladder." "Thank you." "Wait a moment, please," said Mr Benham suavely, as Grainger was about to leave the box. "You say this Robert Durnford came to stay at `The Silver Fleece' the day before Hubert Dorrien was lost. That was on a Saturday evening. Did you at any time between that and Sunday evening have any conversation with him about the Dorrien family?" The prisoner's head sank lower and lower. That devil of a counsel! "Well sir, we did." "Kindly repeat it." "Well, sir, as far as I can remember, the gentleman said he'd known the old Squire, the General's brother. First he asked whose the house was, an' then we got talkin', and I told him a little about the General--just quietly and between ourselves, like." "Quite so. And what else did you tell him?" "Well, sir, I told him a little about the young Squire being in difficulties with his father--not meanin' any 'arm to anybody," went on the man piteously, and with a penitent glance towards the dock. "No, no. Of course not. People do talk of these things," said Mr Benham encouragingly--then waxing impressive. "Now, did you mention a girl named Lizzie Devine?" "Oh Lord, sir," cried poor Grainger, horror-stricken, staring open-mouthed at the placid face of the inquisitorial counsel and wondering how the deuce he had ferreted out all this. "I didn't mean no harm, but we was just a-talkin' quietly like." Then little by little Mr Benham inexorably elicited from the unwilling and terrified witness, the whole of the conversation that had passed between himself and Robert Durnford on the subject, and how he had told the stranger that Hubert Dorrien had blackened his brother's name for his own advantage.