ed in the
direction of the road. The moment he had disappeared Hewitt turned to
the ruined barn. The door was gone, and the scorched and charred lumber
that littered the place had a look of absolute ghostliness--perhaps
chiefly the effect of my imagination in the knowledge of the ghastly
tragedy that the place had witnessed. Well in from the doorway was a
great scatter of light ashes--plainly the pea-straw that the coachman
had spoken of. And by these ashes and partly among them, marked in some
odd manner on the floor, was a horrible black shape that I shuddered to
see, as Hewitt pointed it out with a moving forefinger, which he made to
trace the figure of a prostrate human form.

"Did you never see that before in a burnt house?" Hewitt asked in a
hushed voice. "I have, more than once. That sort of thing always leaves
a strange stain under it, like a shadow."

But business claimed Martin Hewitt, and he stepped carefully within.
Scarcely had he done so, when he stood suddenly still, with a low
whistle, pointing toward something lying among the dirt and ashes by the
foot of that terrible shape.

"See?" he said. "Don't disturb anything, but look!"

I crept in with all the care I could command, and stooped. The place was
filled with such a vast confusion of lumber and cinder and ash that at
first I failed to see at all what had so startled Hewitt's attention.
And even when I understood his direction, all I saw was about a dozen
little wire loops, each a quarter of an inch long or less, lying among a
little grey ash that clung about the ends of some of the loops in clots.
Even as I looked another thing caught Hewitt's eye. Among the
straw-ashes there lay some cinders of paper and card, and near them
another cinder, smaller, and plainly of some other substance. Hewitt
took my walking-stick, and turned this cinder over. It broke apart as he
did so, and from within it two or three little charred sticks escaped.
Hewitt snatched one up and scrutinised it closely.

"Do you see the tin ferrule?" he said. "It has been a brush; and that
was a box of colours!" He pointed to the cinder at his feet. "That being
so," he went on, "that paper and card was probably a sketch-book. Brett!
come outside a bit. There's something amazing here!"

We went outside, and Hewitt faced me with a curious expression that for
the life of me I could not understand.

"Suppose," he said, "_that Mr. Victor Peytral is not dead after all_?"

"Not dead?"