"Do you really tell me that the only reason you had for warning him against going out late at night was--instinct?" asked Brereton. "Come, now!" "Mostly instinct, anyhow," she answered. "Women have a sort of feeling about things that men haven't--leastways, no men that I've ever met had it. But of course, I'd more than that. Mr. Kitely, now, he was a townsman--a London man. I'm a countrywoman. He didn't understand--you couldn't get him to understand--that it's not safe to go walking in lonely places in country districts like this late at night. When I'd got to know his habits, I expostulated with him more than once. I pointed out to him that in spots like this, where there's naught nearer than them houses at the foot of the hill one way, and Harborough's cottage another way, and both of 'em a good quarter of a mile off, and where there's all these coverts and coppices and rocks, it was not safe for an elderly man who sported a fine gold watch and chain to go wandering about in the darkness. There's always plenty of bad characters in country places who'd knock the King himself on the head for the sake of as much as Mr. Kitely had on him, even if it was no more than the chain which every Tom and Dick could see! And it's turned out just as I prophesied. He's come to it!" "But you said just now that he must have been murdered for something else than his valuables," said Brereton. "I said that if his papers were gone, somebody must have wanted them bad," retorted Miss Pett. "Anyway, what's happened is just what I felt might happen, and there he is--dead. And I should be obliged to some of you if you'd send up a woman or two to help me lay him out, for I can't be expected to do everything by myself, nor to stop in this cottage alone, neither!" Leaving the doctor and a couple of policemen to arrange matters with the housekeeper, the sergeant went outside, followed by the others. He turned to Cotherstone. "I'm going down to Harborough's cottage, at the other end of the Shawl," he said. "I don't expect to learn aught much there--yet--but I can see if he's at home, anyway. If any of you gentlemen like to come down----" Bent laid a hand on Cotherstone's arm and turned him in the direction of his house. "Brereton and I'll go with the sergeant," he said. "You must go home--Lettie'll be anxious about things. Go down with him, Mr. Garthwaite--you'll both hear more later." To Brereton's great surprise, Cotherstone made no objection to this summary dismissal. He and Garthwaite went off in one direction; the others, led by the observant policeman who had found the empty pocket-book and recognized the peculiar properties of the cord, turned away in another. "Where's this we're going now?" asked Brereton as he and Bent followed their leaders through the trees and down the slopes of the Shawl.