"Thrown down or forced down--it's all the same," said Neale. "There may have been a struggle--a fight. But there, what's the use of speculating? We don't even know whose body it is yet. Let's get on and tell those police chaps." Turning off the open moor on to the highway at the corner of Scarnham Bridge, they suddenly came face to face with Gabriel Chestermarke, who, for once in a way, was walking instead of driving into the town. The two young people, emerging from the shelter of a high hedgerow which bordered the moorland at that point, started at sight of the banker's colourless face, cold and set as usual. But Gabriel betrayed no surprise, and was in no way taken aback. He lifted his hat in silence, and was marching on when Neale impulsively hailed him. "Mr. Chestermarke!" he exclaimed. Gabriel halted and turned, looking at his late clerk with absolute impassiveness. He made no remark, and stood like a statue, waiting for Neale to speak. "You may like to know," said Neale, coming up to him, "we have just found the body of a man on the moor--Ellersdeane Hollow." Gabriel showed no surprise. No light came into his eyes, no colour to his cheek. It seemed a long time before his firmly set lips relaxed. "A man?" he said quietly. "What man?" "We don't know," answered Neale. "All we know is, there's a man's body lying at the bottom of one of the old shafts up there--near Ellersdeane Tower. The tinker who camps out there has just seen it--he's been partly down the shaft." "And--did not recognize it?" asked Gabriel. "No--it was too far beneath him," replied Neale. "He's gone into the village to get help." Gabriel lingered a moment, and then, lifting his hat again, began to move forward towards the town. "I should advise you to acquaint the police, Mr. Neale," he said. "Good-morning!" He marched away, stiffly upright, across the bridge and up the Cornmarket, and Neale and Betty followed. "Why did you tell--him?" asked Betty. Neale threw a glance of something very like scorn after the retreating figure. "Wanted to see how he'd take it!" he answered. "Bah!--Gabriel Chestermarke's no better than a wax figure! You might as well tell a marble image any news of this sort as tell him! You'd have thought he'd have had sufficient human feeling in him to say that he hoped it wasn't your uncle, anyhow!" "No, I shouldn't," said Betty. "I sized Gabriel up--and Joseph, too--when I walked into their parlour the other afternoon. They haven't any feelings--you might as well expect to get feeling out of a fish." They met Starmidge in the Market-Place--talking to Parkinson. Neale told the news to both. The journalist dashed into his office for his hat, and made off to Ellersdeane Hollow: Starmidge turned to the police-station with his information. "No one else knows, I suppose?" he remarked, as they went along. "Gabriel Chestermarke knows," answered Neale. "We met him as we were coming off the moor and I told him."