"You would not have him take some one to pick him up if he were thrown," said Wyllard. "My dear Dora, there is not the slightest occasion for alarm. The horse is young, and a little gay; but your cousin excels as a rough-rider, and there will be no harm done." "But why should he want to ride that horse?" said Dora; "I'm sure Manby would advise him not." "The very reason why he should do it," replied her husband. "I wonder if he is trying to kill himself while I am eating my breakfast calmly here?" speculated Joseph Distin. "He must know that I suspect him; and he may think that the game is up." Whatever Bothwell's intention might have been, he came back to Penmorval before eleven o'clock, bringing home the big bay hunter bathed in sweat, and as tame as a sheep. "A fine, honest horse! Only wants riding," he said, as he flung the bridle to the groom, who had been watching for him at the stable-gates, with an air of expecting to see broken bones. In the hall Bothwell met Dora, cool, and calm, and beautiful, in her white muslin breakfast gown. She was bringing in a basket of flowers from the hothouse, to be arranged by her own hands. "Is that London lawyer gone yet?" asked Bothwell curtly. He could not be civil even to his cousin when he spoke of Joseph Distin. "Yes, he has gone--I hope, never to come back again," said Dora. "He is really a very well-bred man, and he made himself most agreeable here; but he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere of crime. I could not help thinking of all the horrible cases he must have been concerned in, and that he had grown rich by the crimes of mankind. He could find out nothing about that poor girl's death, it seems, although he is so clever." "Which goes rather to establish my view that the girl fell out of the train by accident," replied Bothwell. CHAPTER V. PEOPLE WILL TALK. The year was a month older since Joseph Distin went back to town, baffled and angry with himself, yet glad for his friend's sake that his discoveries had gone no further. The heather was purpling on the hills, where the dwarf furze flashed here and there into patches of gold. The tourist season had set in; but the tourist for the most part avoided the little town of Bodmin, nestling snugly inland among the hills, and turned his face to the sea, and the wild rocks which defend that romantic western coast, to the Lizard and the Land's End, to rugged Tintagel and sandy Bude.