men about their own affairs that you could
imagine!"

"But--they say some of their securities are missing," remarked Betty.
"They'll have to let the exact details be known, won't they?"

"Depends--on them," replied Neale. "They'll only do what they like. And
they don't love you for coming on the scene, I assure you!"

"But I'm here, nevertheless!" said Betty. "And here I stop! Wallie,
haven't you got even a bit of a theory about all this!"

"Can't say that I have!" confessed Neale woefully. "I'm not a very
brilliant hand at thinking. The only thing I can think of is that Mr.
Horbury, knowing Lord Ellersdeane had got home on Saturday, thought
he'd hand back those jewels as soon as possible, and set off in the
evening with that intention--possibly to be robbed and murdered on the
way. Sounds horrible--but honestly I can't think of any other theory."

Betty involuntarily shivered and glanced about her at the dark cavernous
spaces of the wood, which had now thickened into dense masses of oak and
beech. She took a firmer grip of Neale's arm.

"And he'd come through here!" she exclaimed. "How dangerous!--with those
things in his pocket!"

"Oh, but he'd think nothing of it!" answered Neale. "He was used to
walking at night--he knew every yard of this neighbourhood. Besides,
he'd know very well that nobody would know what he had on him. What I'd
like to know is--supposing my theory's right, and that he was taking
these jewels to Ellersdeane, how did anybody get to know that he had
them? For the Chestermarkes didn't know they'd been given to him, and I
didn't--nobody at the bank knew."

A sudden turn in the path brought them to the edge of the wood, and they
emerged on a broad plateau of rough grass, from beneath which a wide
expanse of landscape stretched away, bathed just then in floods of
moonlight. Neale paused and waved his stick towards the shadowy
distances and over the low levels which lay between.

"Ellersdeane Hollow!" he said.

Betty paused too, looking silently around. She saw an undulating, broken
stretch of country, half-heath, half-covert, covering a square mile or
so of land, houseless, solitary. In its midst rose a curiously shaped
eminence or promontory, at the highest point of which some ruin or other
lifted gaunt, shapeless walls against the moonlit sky. Far down beneath
it, in a depression amongst the heath-clad undulations, a fire glowed
red in the gloom. And on the further side of this solitude,