nned to the map.

'_Mrs Tresize at Landeweddy, 48_,' she read, holding it under the
lamp, and slightly puckering her handsome brows.

'That doesn't flatter you, ma'am.'

'Hey?' Mrs Tresize looked up sharply. 'You don't suppose that means
my _age_?'

'I--er--fancied it might. It would be a guess, of course.'

'Nonsense,' said Mrs Tresize.

'It _is_ nonsense,' the doctor agreed. 'The man was obviously
misinformed.'

'It doesn't refer to my age at all,' said Mrs Tresize, positively.
'It--it alludes to something quite different. I was barely nineteen
when I married.'

'If you can guess to what it alludes--'

'_Reported good money, but near--_' read the widow, paused, and
uttered a liquid laugh. 'Oh, I am glad you showed me this.
We'll punish him for that, doctor, if he dares to turn up.'

'If,' echoed the doctor, with a glance at the gun-racks.

'I ought to go and warn Tryphena.'

'Every moment may be precious,' he agreed again, while she went to
the chimney-place and fetched the now boiling kettle.

She mixed the drink and set it close before him, where he leaned
pondering a pile of gold he had poured upon the table from one of the
canvas bags. The steam mounting from the glass bedimmed his
spectacles. He took them off to wipe them, and perceived that she
was smiling. She bit her lip at being thus caught.

'I was thinking,' she made haste to explain, 'what a funny situation
'twould be if by any chance the man was innocent, and you'd driven
off with money that honestly belonged to him.'

'Honest men don't put on women's clothes to tramp the moors at
night,' Doctor Unonius objected.

'Well, I don't see that it mightn't happen. A man having this money
to carry, and afraid of being robbed, might put it to himself that
rough characters--specially gipsies--often let a woman pass where
they'd attack a man. Or suppose, now, the man _was_ a gipsy?--he'd
sold three horses, we'll say, at Tregarrick Christmas Fair, and was
trudging it back to his camp somewhere on the moors. A gipsy would
be the very man to hit on that kind of disguise, it being against his
own principles to hurt any woman but his wife.'

'This man was a butcher, ma'am, and no gipsy.'

'O--oh!' cried the widow, with a little gasp. 'How do you know?'

'Never mind how I know, ma'am. He was a butcher, right enough; and,
on your hypothesis that I've committed highway robbery upon an
innocent man, I'd like you to explain how he comes t