He sighed with satisfaction. He placed the book in a drawer out of the way; he need not worry any more about the thing. So with another sigh of relief he reached out for his books and returned once more to the study of his “subject.” Presently he became aware that his eyes were resting on the page without reading it; that his mind was back again to the Book of Extracts, and that in his brain there was forming, without any volition of his own, one or two difficult questions about that maniac. As, for instance, if there had been such a creature wandering in the fields someone would have seen him; he would probably have murdered more than one person while he was in the mood for murder. There was a little boy, for instance, scaring birds; he would have killed that little boy. Then, the fact of a roving maniac would have been known. He must have escaped from somewhere: his madness must have been known. There would have been some sort of hue and cry after him: either at the inquest or at the trial there would have been some mention of this dangerous person going about at large; some suggestion that he might have been the guilty person. Dangerous maniacs do not escape without any notice taken, or any warning that they are loose. No. It would not do. Another and a more workable theory must be invented. He got another. Poachers! Everybody knows the deadly hostility, far worse seventy years ago than at present, that existed between a country gentleman and a poacher. The latter was accustomed, in those days, to get caught in a mantrap; to put his foot into a gin; to be fired upon by gamekeepers; to be treated like a weasel or a stoat. In return the poacher manifested a lamentably revengeful spirit, which sometimes went as far as murder. In this case, no doubt, the crime was committed by a poacher. The theory satisfied him at first, just as much as its predecessor. Presently, however, he reflected that there is not much for a poacher to do in early June, and that poachers do not prowl about the woods and coverts in broad daylight and at noon; and that poachers do not, as a rule, murder gentlemen belonging to other parts of the country. Besides, poachers on one estate would not bear malice against the squire of another estate fifteen miles distant. Leonard pushed his papers away in despair.