“Very good friends, they are,” assented Gunnet. “But this lady only came yesterday, I’m thinking, and I don’t remember ever to have seen her here before. Likely he doesn’t know her.” He stood stolidly by the table while the Sergeant proceeded with his examination of the room; once, only, he volunteered a statement. “He seemed proper upset when he came down to the station,” he remarked thoughtfully. The Sergeant looked round sharply. “In what way, upset?” Gunnet’s ruddy face took on an even deeper hue in his efforts to express himself clearly. “Startled like, as any one would be that had found a thing like this in his room. More excited than guilty, if you understand me. By the time we got back here he was acting quite natural. Lit the fire and made coffee and all while we was waiting for you. I shouldn’t say he acted suspicious.” If the Sergeant held any opinion on the subject, he kept it to himself. He finished his examination of the room and moved to the door. “Nothing here,” he said. “Give me your lantern and I’ll have a look outside. You stay and keep an eye on things here. Come on, Collins.” He went out, followed by the man he had brought from Whitbury, a young Constable, fresh to his job and awed into silence by the magnitude of his first case. Meanwhile John Leslie sat huddled over the stove in the kitchen, half asleep. It seemed to him as if this pleasant country life to which he had retired so thankfully after four hideous years of warfare had suddenly merged itself into a nightmare which would never end. His one longing was for bed and sleep and yet even that seemed out of the question so long as the farm housed that tragic figure. Meanwhile there seemed nothing for it but to hang about until all this sordid official procedure was over. He was roused by the entry of Collins. “Sergeant Brace says would you come outside for a minute, sir,” he announced. Leslie rose wearily to his feet and followed the man. Brace stood just outside the door leading into the garden. “We’ve found footsteps in the bed under the sitting-room window. Looks as if some one had stood there looking into the room. Perhaps you’d have a look at them.” He led the way to the flower-bed and turned the lantern on it. The footprints were distinctly to be seen in the soft earth. They were large and curiously undefined in outline. “That’s not a clear-cut mark like you or I would make,” commented the Sergeant. “I should say they were done by some one in an uncommonly old pair of boots. There’s more upper than sole to those! What sort of boots does your man wear?” “The usual heavy labourer’s boot with nails in it. Good solid sole. I’m not an adept at this sort of thing, but, if what you say is true, he did not make those marks. Neither did I, for the matter of that.” He held out his own foot for inspection. For the first time Brace permitted himself to smile.