"Just so, sir," said Pratt. "Mr. Eldrick sent me here for the same purpose. There's really not much to do--beyond the necessary arrangements, which are already pretty forward. Going back to town, sir?" he went on, following Collingwood out to his motor-car, which stood waiting in the drive. "No!" replied Collingwood. "I'm going to send this man to Barford to fetch my bag to the inn down there in the village, where I'm going to stay for a few days. Did you hear that?" he continued, turning to the driver. "Go back to Barford--get my bag from the _Station Hotel_ there--bring it to the _Normandale Arms_--I'll meet you there on your return." The car went off, and Collingwood, with a nod to Pratt, was about to turn down a side path towards the village. But Pratt stopped him. "Would you care to see the place where the accident happened, Mr. Collingwood?" he said. "It's close by--won't take five minutes." Collingwood hesitated a moment; then he turned back. It might be well, he reflected, if he made himself acquainted with all the circumstances of this case, simple as they seemed. "Thank you," he said. "If it's so near." "This way, sir," responded Pratt. He led his companion along the front of the house, through the shrubberies at the end of a wing, and into a plantation by a path thickly covered with pine needles. Presently they emerged upon a similar track, at right angles to that by which they had come, and leading into a denser part of the woods. And at the end of a hundred yards of it they came to a barricade, evidently of recent construction, over which Pratt stretched a hand. "There!" he said. "That's the bridge, sir." Collingwood looked over the barricade. He saw that he and Pratt were standing at the edge of one thick plantation of fir and pine; the edge of a similar plantation stretched before them some ten yards away. But between the two lay a deep, dark ravine, which, immediately in front of the temporary barricade, was spanned by a narrow rustic bridge--a fragile-looking thing of planks, railed in by boughs of trees. And in the middle was a jagged gap in both floor and side-rails, showing where the rotten wood had given way. "I'll explain, Mr. Collingwood," said the clerk presently. "I knew this park, sir--I knew it well, before the late Mr. John Mallathorpe bought the property. That path at the other end of the bridge makes a short cut down to the station in the valley--through the woods and the lower part of the park. I came up that path, from the station, on Saturday afternoon, intending to cross this bridge and go on to the house, where I had private business. When I got to the other end of the bridge, there, I saw the gap in the middle. And then I looked down into the cut--there's a road--a paved road--down there, and I saw--him! And so I made shift to scramble down--stiff job it was!--to get to him. But he was dead, Mr. Collingwood--stone dead, sir!--though I'm certain he hadn't been dead five minutes. And----"