ack on Tregarrick. "There's a wall," he said,
and I saw by the direction of his finger that he meant the wall of the
county prison, "and beneath that wall's a road, and across that road's
a dismal pool, and beyond that pool's a green hillside, with a road
athurt it that comes down and crosses by the pool's head. Standin'
'pon that hillside you can see a door in the wall, twenty feet above
the ground, an' openin' on nothing. Leastways, you could see it once;
an' even now, if ye've good eyesight, ye can see where they've bricked
it up."

I could, in fact, even at our distance, detect the patch of recent
stone-work; and knew something of its history.

"Now," the old man continued, "turn your looks to the right and mark
the face of Tregarrick town-clock. You see it, hey?"--and I had time
to read the hour on its dial before Boutigo jolted us over the ridge
and out of sight of it--"Well, carry them two things in your mind: for
they mazed Dan'l Best an' murdered his brother Hughie."

And, much as I shall repeat it, he told me this tale, pausing now and
again to be corroborated by the woman in the corner. The history, my
dear reader, is accurate enough--for Boutigo's van.

There lived a young man in Tregarrick in the time of the French War.
His name was Dan'l Best, and he had an only brother Hughie, just three
years younger than himself. Their father and mother had died of the
small-pox and left them, when quite young children, upon the parish:
but old Walters of the Packhorse--he was great-grandfather of the
Walters that keeps it now--took a liking to them and employed them,
first about his stables and in course of time as post-boys. Very good
post-boys they were, too, till Hughie took to drinking and wenching
and cards and other devil's tricks. Dan'l was always a steady sort:
walked with a nice young woman that was under-housemaid up to the old
Lord Bellarmine's at Castle Cannick, and was saving up to be married,
when Hughie robbed the mail.

Hughie robbed the mail out of doubt. He did it up by Tippet's Barrow,
just beyond the cross-roads where the scarlet gig used to meet the
coach and take the mails for Castle Cannick and beyond to Tolquite.
Billy Phillips, that drove the gig, was found in the ditch with his
mouth gagged, and swore to Hughie's being the man. The Lord Chief
Justice, too, summed up dead against him, and the jury didn't even
leave the box. And the moral was, "Hughie Best, you're to be taken to
the place