"Her answers, and more particularly her manner, set me to thinking. I had not seen Aaron since the day after Jakey's funeral. No one, so far as I could learn without pushing inquiries unduly, had seen much of Aaron since the inquest. His trade had always lain further afield than the immediate neighbourhood, where most people raised their own chickens for use, and few in sufficient quantity to sell. Mrs. Searle had seen him, certainly, and Mrs. Searle had remarked a change in him. She said that he was queer and silent; she thought that the shock of his brother's death had preyed on his mind. In her own words, he was 'getting just like Jakey in his ways.' "It was about this time that the talk first began about the haunting of Dutchman's Hill. I am not a credulous man where ghosts are concerned, and I scoffed any idea of the supernatural. One stranger, a pedlar, said that a 'something' had jumped out and chased him to the bridge, where it stopped. Others declared that it was the ghost of Jakey that haunted the place. On top of all this came the--er--the very singular attacks upon Mr. Lessing. I don't want to go into Lessing's case now. His own story was of course untenable, and I strongly believe that he knew a great deal more than he chose to tell me at the time--in other words, that he found amusement in trying, deliberately, to see how much I would believe. We were always strongly opposed on certain questions, though in general I found him a most courteous and charming man, and I am afraid he was not above trying, in this matter, to take a rise out of me, as they say. If he had taken me into his confidence then, instead of inventing the ridiculous sort of bogy-tale he did, we should have been at the truth of this matter much earlier." Herrick and I exchanged glances. I fancied he was about to speak, but on second thoughts changed his mind. Lennox continued. "The problem resolved itself into this. If Jakey was still alive, and I could swear to it that he was, whose was the body that had been identified and buried in March, and how was it that no one, save myself, guessed at his continued existence? _Who was Aaron Menning?_ "I tell you, Haverill, the thing became a nightmare. I had no proof to go upon, nothing but my own instinct. The more I thought over it, the more clear it grew to me. The man whose body had been found at Dutchman's Hill was not Jakey at all, it was Aaron." "But----"