the trained ones had all died out.'

'Horses?' repeated Doctor Unonius. 'Then that accounts for the noise
I heard--'

'Eh?' queried Mr Rattenbury sharply.

'A sound of galloping, as it were. I opened the window to look, but
could see nothing.

Mrs Tresize caught her breath. 'Yes, yes,' she put in, 'Doctor
Unonius opened the window. You wouldn't charge _him_ with making
signals, I hope?'

'But--' began Doctor Unonius and Mr Rattenbury together. The doctor
was about to say that, the road being hidden from this downstairs
window, it followed that the window could not be seen from the road.
But the riding-officer had the louder voice and bore him down.

'But,' he objected, 'the light was shown from an _upstairs_ window,
ma'am.'

'To be sure,' the widow squared her chin and glanced at Doctor
Unonius defiantly--'and what should the doctor be doing here except
attending on the sick? And where should my poor maid Tryphena be
lying at this moment but upstairs and in bed with the colic?'

The doctor, on a sudden confronted with this amazing lie, cast up his
hands a little way, and so, averting his eyes, turned slowly round to
the fireplace. His brain swam. For the moment he could scarcely
have been more helpless had some one dealt him a blow in the wind.
His nature so abhorred falsehood that he blushed even to suspect it.
To have it flung at him thus brazenly--

As he recovered his wits a little he heard the widow say,--

'And as for the horses, they never came this way.'

'Is that so?' Mr Rattenbury swung round upon the doctor.

'They--they certainly did not pass along the road outside,' said
Doctor Unonius, speaking as in a dream. 'The noise of galloping
turned off at some distance below the house, and seemed to die away
to the northward.'

'Then I've made a cursed mess of this,' said the riding-officer,
snatching up his hat. 'Your pardon, ma'am! and if you won't forgive
me to-night, I'll call and apologise to-morrow.'

CHAPTER VII.

He was gone. They heard the clatter of his horse's hoofs down the
road, and listened as it died away.

Neither spoke. Mrs Tresize stood by the table, and so that, glancing
sideways across her left shoulder, her eyes studied the doctor's
back, which he kept obstinately turned upon her. He had put up a
hand to the chimney-shelf and leaned forward with his gaze bent on
the embers.

'Doctor?'

'Ma'am?' after a long pause.

'Do you really reckon smuggling