"Dangerous place that there!" said Pickard suddenly. "If I'd known o' that, I shouldn't ha' let my young 'uns come to play about here. They might be tummlin' in and drownin' theirsens! I mun tell my missis to keep 'em away!" Byner turned--to find the landlord pointing at the old shaft which had gradually become filled with water. In the morning sunlight its surface glittered like a plane of burnished metal, but when the two men went nearer and gazed at it from its edge, the water was black and unfathomable to the eye. "Goodish thirty feet o' water in that there!" surmised Pickard. "It's none safe for childer to play about--theer's nowt to protect 'em. Next time I see Mestur Shepherd I shall mak' it my business to tell him so; he owt either to drain that watter off or put a fence around it." "Is Mr. Shepherd the property-owner?" asked Byner. "Aye!--it's all his, this land," answered Pickard. He pointed to a low-roofed house set amidst elms and chestnuts, some distance off across the moor. "Lives theer, does Mestur Shepherd--varry well-to-do man, he is." "How could that water be drained off?" asked Byner with assumed carelessness. "Easy enough!" replied Pickard. "Cut through yon ledge, and let it run into t' far quarry there. A couple o' men 'ud do that job in a day." Byner made no further remark. He and Pickard strolled back to the _Green Man_ together. And declining the landlord's invitation to step inside and take another glass, but promising to see him again very soon, the inquiry agent walked on to the tram-car and rode down to Barford to keep his appointment with Eldrick and Collingwood at the barrister's chambers. CHAPTER XXI THE DIRECT CHARGE While Byner was pursuing his investigations in the neighbourhood of the _Green Man_, Collingwood was out at Normandale Grange, discussing certain matters with Nesta Mallathorpe. He had not only thought long and deeply over his conversation with Cobcroft the previous evening, but had begun to think about the crucial point of the clerk's story as soon as he spoke in the morning, and the result of his meditations was that he rose early, intercepted Cobcroft before he started for Mallathorpe's Mill and asked his permission to re-tell the story to Miss Mallathorpe. Cobcroft raised no objection, and when Collingwood had been to his chambers and seen his letters, he chartered a car and rode out to Normandale where he told Nesta of what he had learned and of his own conclusions. And Nesta, having listened carefully to all he had to tell, put a direct question to him. "You think this document which Pratt told me he holds is my late uncle's will?" she said. "What do you suppose its terms to be?"