I gasped; "but--but he is! We know----"

"It seems to me," Hewitt pursued, with his eyes still fixed on mine,
"that we know very little indeed of this affair, as yet. The body was
unrecognisable, or very near it. You remember what the coachman said?
'If it wasn't for Mr. Peytral's being missing,' he said, 'I doubt if
they'd have known it was him at all.' I think those were his exact
words. More, you must remember that the body has not been seen by either
of Peytral's relatives."

"But then," I protested, "if it isn't his body whose is it?"

"Ah, indeed," Hewitt responded, "whose is it? Don't you see the
possibilities of the thing? There's a colour-box and a sketch-book
burned. Who carried a colour-box and a sketch-book? Not Peytral, or we
should have heard of it from his daughter; she made a particular point
of her father's evening strolls being quite aimless, so far as her
knowledge or conjecture went; she knew nothing of any sketching. And
another thing--don't you see what _those_ things mean?" He pointed
toward the place of the little wire loops.

"Not at all."

"Man, don't you see they've been boot-buttons? When the boots
shrivelled, the threads were burnt and the buttons dropped off.
Boot-buttons are made of a sort of composition that burns to a grey ash,
once the fire really gets hold of them--as you may try yourself, any
time you please. You can see the ash still clinging to some of the
shanks; and there the shanks are, lying in two groups, six and six, as
they fell! Now Peytral came out in laced shoes."

"But if Peytral isn't dead, where is he?"

"Precisely," rejoined Hewitt, with the curious expression still in his
eyes. "As you say, where is he? And as you said before, who is the dead
man? Who is the dead man, and where is Peytral, and why has he gone?
Don't you see the possibilities of the case _now_?"

Light broke upon me suddenly. I saw what Hewitt meant. Here was a
possible explanation of the whole thing--Peytral's recent change of
temper, his evening prowlings, his driving away of Bowmore, and lastly,
of his disappearance--his flight, as it now seemed probable it was. The
case had taken a strange turn, and we looked at one another with meaning
eyes. It might be that Hewitt, begged by the unhappy girl we had but
just left to prove the innocence of her lover, would by that very act
bring her father to the gallows.

"Poor girl!" Hewitt murmured, as we stood staring at one another.
"Better she con