"Topcoat swore subsequently that when he said this he had not recognised who the crouching figure was. But he was a very hard man where poachers were concerned; he had been much worried with them lately, and a day or two ago had been reprimanded by Lord Crookhaven for want of vigilance. This, no doubt, irritated his temper, and made him rather 'jumpy.' "Vissio, with his gun on his shoulder, went off in the direction of the Poacher's Leap. Topcoat watched him until a bit of sharply-rising ground hid him from sight. A moment or two later the crouching figure stood up, and Topcoat recognised Mr. Gerald Moville. He had always had exceptionally fine sight, and Mr. Moville had certain tricks of gait and movement which were unmistakable even at that distance. Topcoat immediately shouted to Vissio to come back, but apparently the Italian did not hear him; and the last thing that the gamekeeper saw on that eventful morning was Mr. Moville suddenly turn and walk towards the high bit of ground behind which Vissio had just disappeared. "And that was the last," my eccentric neighbour concluded with a chuckle all his own, "that has been seen up to this hour of those two men--Mr. Gerald Moville and Antonio Vissio. Topcoat waited for a while on the moor, and called to the Italian several times, but as he heard nothing in response, and as it had started to rain heavily, he finally went home. Vissio did not turn up at the cottage the whole of that day, and he did not come home that night. The following morning, which was a Thursday, Topcoat walked across to the Goodens' cottage to make enquiries, but no one had seen the Italian, and Winnie knew nothing about him. The gamekeeper waited until the Saturday before he informed the police; that, of course, was a serious delay which ought never to have occurred, but you have to know that class of north-country yokel intimately to appreciate this man's conduct throughout the affair. They all have a perfect horror of anything to do with the police: the type of delinquency most frequent in these parts is, of course, poaching, and the gamekeepers on the big estates look on themselves as the only efficient police for those cases. Half the time they don't turn the delinquent over to the magistrates at all, and administer a kind of rough justice as they think best. They hate police interference.