easy. "But
it's a stiff job seeking anything here. There's nobody knows what a
wilderness this Hollow is until they begin exploring it.
Holes--corners--nooks--crannies--bracken and bushes--it is a wilderness,
and that's a fact! I'd engage to hide myself safely in this square mile
for many a week, against a hundred seekers. It wouldn't a bit surprise
me, you know, if it comes out in the end that Mr. Horbury, after all,
did fall down one of these old shafts. I couldn't believe it possible at
first, knowing that he knew every in and out of the place, but I'm
beginning to think he may have done. There's only one thing against that
theory."

"What?" asked Betty.

"Where's the other gentleman?" answered the tinker. "If they came
together on to this waste, one couldn't fall down a shaft without the
other knowing it, eh? And it's scarcely likely they'd both fall down."

Neale glanced at Betty and shook his head.

"There you are, you see!" he muttered. "They all hang to the notion that
Hollis did meet Horbury! Mr. Horbury may have been alone, after all, you
know," he went on, turning to Creasy. "There's no proof that the other
gentleman was with him."

"Aye, well--I'm going on what these paper accounts say," answered
Creasy. "They all take it for granted that those two were together.
Well, about these old shaftings, mister--I did notice something very
early this morning that I thought might be looked into."

"What is it?" asked Neale. "Don't let's lose any chance of finding
anything out, however small it may be."

The tinker finished mending a kettle and set it aside amongst other
renovated articles. He lifted the pan of solder off the fire, set it
aside, too, and got up.

"Come this way, then," he said. "I was going in to Scarnham this noon to
tell Mr Polke about it, but as long as you're here----"

He led the way through the thick gorse and heather until he came to a
narrow track which wound across the moor in the direction of the town.
There he paused, pointing towards Ellersdeane on the one hand, towards
Scarnham on the other.

"You see this track, mister?" he said. "You'll notice that it goes to
Ellersdeane village that way, and to Scarnham this. Of course, you can't
see it all the way in either direction, but you can take my word for
it--it does. It comes out at Ellersdeane by the duck-pond, at Scarnham
by the bridge at the foot of Cornmarket. People who know it would follow
it if they wanted a short cut acros