"Well, then----" she continued. "You see, master, since my old man died, I've lived all alone up here. I've a bit to live on--not over much, but enough. All the same, if I can save a bit by getting a hare or a rabbit, or a bird or two now and then, off the moor--well, I do! We all of us does that, as lives on the moor: some folks calls it poaching, but we call it taking our own. Now then, on that night we're talking about, I went along to Good Folks' Lift to look at some snares I'd set early that day. There's a good deal of bush and scrub about that place--I was amongst the bushes when I heard steps, and I looked out and saw a tall man in grey clothes coming close by. How did I know he were in grey clothes? Why, 'cause he stopped close by me to light his pipe! But he'd his back to me, so I didn't see his full face, only a side of it. He were a man with a thin, greyish beard. Well, he walks past there, not far--and then I heard other steps. Then I heard your father's voice, miss--and I see the two of 'em meet. They stood, whispering together, for a minute or so--then they came back past me, and they went off across the moor towards Hexendale. And soon they were out of sight, and when I'd finished what I was after I came my ways home. That's all, master--but if yon old man was killed down in Highmarket Shawl Wood between nine and ten o'clock that night, then Jack Harborough didn't kill him, for Jack was up here at soon after nine, and him and the tall man went away in the opposite direction!" "You're sure about the time?" asked Brereton anxiously. "Certain, master! It was ten minutes to nine when I went out--nearly ten when I come back. My clock's always right--I set it by the almanack and the sunrise and sunset every day--and you can't do better," asserted Mrs. Hamthwaite. "You're equally sure about the second man being Harborough?" insisted Brereton. "You couldn't be mistaken?" "Mistaken? No!--master, I know Harborough's voice, and his figure, aye, and his step as well as I know my own fireside," declared Mrs. Hamthwaite. "Of course I know it were Harborough--no doubt on't!" "How are you sure that this was the evening of the murder?" asked Brereton. "Can you prove that it was?" "Easy!" said Mrs. Hamthwaite. "The very next morning I went away to see my daughter up the coast. I heard of the old man's murder at High Gill Junction. But I didn't hear then that Harborough was suspected--didn't hear that till later on, when we read it in the newspapers." "And the other man--the tall man in grey clothes, who has a slightly grey beard--you didn't know him?" Mrs. Hamthwaite made a face which seemed to suggest uncertainty.