has taken pains to prevent them from being
_tete-a-tete_. By the way, your instructions to me never to allow
Sir Henry to go out alone will become very much more onerous if a
love affair were to be added to our other difficulties. My
popularity would soon suffer if I were to carry out your orders
to the letter.

The other day--Thursday, to be more exact--Dr. Mortimer lunched
with us. He has been excavating a barrow at Long Down, and has
got a prehistoric skull which fills him with great joy. Never was
there such a single-minded enthusiast as he! The Stapletons came
in afterwards, and the good doctor took us all to the Yew Alley,
at Sir Henry's request, to show us exactly how everything
occurred upon that fatal night. It is a long, dismal walk, the
Yew Alley, between two high walls of clipped hedge, with a narrow
band of grass upon either side. At the far end is an old
tumble-down summer-house. Half-way down is the moor-gate, where
the old gentleman left his cigar-ash. It is a white wooden gate
with a latch. Beyond it lies the wide moor. I remembered your
theory of the affair and tried to picture all that had occurred.
As the old man stood there he saw something coming across the
moor, something which terrified him so that he lost his wits, and
ran and ran until he died of sheer horror and exhaustion. There
was the long, gloomy tunnel down which he fled. And from what? A
sheep-dog of the moor? Or a spectral hound, black, silent, and
monstrous? Was there a human agency in the matter? Did the pale,
watchful Barrymore know more than he cared to say? It was all dim
and vague, but always there is the dark shadow of crime behind
it.

One other neighbour I have met since I wrote last. This is Mr.
Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles to the south
of us. He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and
choleric. His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a
large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of
fighting and is equally ready to take up either side of a
question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly
amusement. Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy the
parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own hands
tear down some other man's gate and declare that a path has
existed there from time immemorial, defying the owner to
prosecute him for trespass. He is learned in old manorial and
communal rights, and he applies his knowledge sometimes