es walked to the edge of the moat and looked across. Then he
examined the stone ledge and the grass border beyond it.

"I've had a good look, Mr. Holmes," said White Mason. "There is nothing
there, no sign that anyone has landed--but why should he leave any
sign?"

"Exactly. Why should he? Is the water always turbid?"

"Generally about this colour. The stream brings down the clay."

"How deep is it?"

"About two feet at each side and three in the middle."

"So we can put aside all idea of the man having been drowned in
crossing."

"No, a child could not be drowned in it."

We walked across the drawbridge, and were admitted by a quaint, gnarled,
dried-up person, who was the butler, Ames. The poor old fellow was white
and quivering from the shock. The village sergeant, a tall, formal,
melancholy man, still held his vigil in the room of Fate. The doctor had
departed.

"Anything fresh, Sergeant Wilson?" asked White Mason.

"No, sir."

"Then you can go home. You've had enough. We can send for you if we
want you. The butler had better wait outside. Tell him to warn Mr. Cecil
Barker, Mrs. Douglas, and the housekeeper that we may want a word with
them presently. Now, gentlemen, perhaps you will allow me to give you
the views I have formed first, and then you will be able to arrive at
your own."

He impressed me, this country specialist. He had a solid grip of fact
and a cool, clear, common-sense brain, which should take him some way
in his profession. Holmes listened to him intently, with no sign of that
impatience which the official exponent too often produced.

"Is it suicide, or is it murder--that's our first question, gentlemen,
is it not? If it were suicide, then we have to believe that this man
began by taking off his wedding ring and concealing it; that he then
came down here in his dressing gown, trampled mud into a corner behind
the curtain in order to give the idea someone had waited for him, opened
the window, put blood on the--"

"We can surely dismiss that," said MacDonald.

"So I think. Suicide is out of the question. Then a murder has been
done. What we have to determine is, whether it was done by someone
outside or inside the house."

"Well, let's hear the argument."

"There are considerable difficulties both ways, and yet one or the other
it must be. We will suppose first that some person or persons inside
the house did the crime. They got this man down here at a time when
everything was