“Never, and I should be inclined, looking at the gentleman from a professional point of view, to believe that he must have been under the turf for a considerable portion of that period. I don’t think there could have been three years’ life in the man I played billiards with that evening. Hard lines for him, poor beggar, if there was property coming to him. He looked as if he wanted it bad enough.” “What had he been doing at the Chase, do you suppose?” “I haven’t the least idea. I was driving in my cart when I passed him. I looked back and watched him for two or three minutes. He was walking very slowly, and with a languid air, like a man who was not used to walking. Ten years—no, Theodore—I don’t think it’s possible such a shaky subject as that could have lasted ten years. One certainly does see very miserable creatures crawling on for years after they have been ticketed for the undertaker—but this man—no—I don’t think he could hold out long after that October morning. I fancy he was booked for a quick passage.” “He may have pulled himself together, and turned over a new leaf.” “Too old, and too far gone for that.” “Or what if he had done something bad and got himself shut up for a few years?” “Penal servitude do you mean? Well, that might do something! It’s a very severe regimen for the habitual drunkard—and it means kill or cure. In this case I should say decidedly kill.” “But it might cure.” “I should think the chances of cure were as two in two hundred. I won’t say it would be impossible, not having examined the patient—but so far as observation can teach a man anything, observation taught me that the case was hopeless.” “And yet it is my belief that this man was at Cheriton some time last year. You know everybody, and talk to everybody, my dear Dolby. I wish you’d find out for me whether I am right?” “I’ll do my best,” answered Mr. Dolby cheerfully. “If the man has been seen by anybody in the village I ought to be able to hear about him. Everybody was tremendously on the lookout last year, after the murder, and no stranger could have escaped observation.” “Perhaps not—but before the murder——” “Anybody who had been seen shortly before the murder would have been remembered and talked about. You can have no idea of the intense excitement that event caused among us. We seemed to talk of nothing else, and to think of nothing else for months.” “And you suppose that if the man I want had been about—for a few hours only, just long enough to come and go away again on that fatal night, he would have been remembered?” “I am sure of it. He would have inevitably been taken for the murderer. Remember, we were all on the alert, ready to fix upon the first suspicious-looking person our memory could suggest to us.” “Do you think Johnson would remember the man?” Johnson was the proprietor of the Cheriton Arms.