The lieutenant ground his teeth. Not thieves alone, but murderers, were these wretches with whom the whole country-side was in league. He picked up the knife, with the dried blood upon it; there was a name scratched roughly on the blade, “Ben Bax.” It was a name new to Tregenna, and strong as the clue seemed, it inspired him with but faint hopes of bringing the murderer to punishment. The whole neighborhood would conspire to shield the author of the outrage; the very fact of the knife, with the name on it, having been left behind, showed with what cynical impunity the wretches went about their work. However, here was at last a deed which not even Squire Waldron could excuse, not even Joan Langney could palliate. The man was dead; there was nothing to be done for him. But information must be given of the murder without delay. Tregenna was near enough to the gig to hail the men in charge of it, and these hurried up to the spot without delay. They knew of the raid, but not of the murder. During the lieutenant’s absence a suspicious-looking sloop had been sighted at anchor some little distance away. A watch had been kept upon her from the cutter, and a boat seen to push off and make for the marshes. The cutter’s crew had manned a boat and given chase, only to find that they had been drawn off in pursuit of a decoy craft, containing nothing contraband, while the men remaining on the cutter had the mortification to see a second boat, piled high with kegs and full of smugglers armed to the teeth, row up the creek, land crew and cargo, and then return to the sloop, exchanging shots with the cutter’s men, without effect on either side. The cutter’s men, however, had seen nothing of the murder, for the irregularities of the ground and the scrubby undergrowth of gorse and bramble had hidden the struggle from their sight, though, but for this circumstance, the spot would have been within the range of their telescopes. Lieutenant Tregenna lost not a moment in returning to Hurst, to report the outrage to Squire Waldron, whose lenity could not afford to excuse such a barbarous act as this on the part of his free-traders. He went by the shortest way this time, taking the foot-track over the hills, by which Parson Langney and his daughter had come on the previous night. Perhaps the ghastly sight he had just witnessed had sharpened his faculties; for before he had gone far over the worn grass of the path he caught sight of some marks which arrested his attention. Stooping to look at them, and then kneeling on the short turf, peering closely at the ground, he soon satisfied himself that the marks were bloodstains, and that they followed the course he was taking.