the rock and commenced another search, with
his nose very close to the ground, moving slowly, and peering diligently
into every little cranny amongst the stones. At length, after travelling
about ten yards in the direction of the spring in this fashion, be called
sharply:

'Hi, Dick What were you doing with that bag here?'

'Never had it nowhere near here,' answered Dick.

'Come, recollect; you put it down for a spell.' 'Didn't,' said Dick.
'Went straight along the side, an' dropped it into the shaft.'

'But look--there's hair on the top of this rock and a tuft on the corner.
Mustn't tell me a cow would roost there, my lad.'

'Don't care--'twasn't me.'

Downy sat on the rock for a moment in a brown study, and the crowd, which
had made itself comfort able in one end of the quarry and up one side,
sat in awed silence, watching him closely, like a theatre audience
waiting for some wonder-worker to perform his feats of magic.

The detective did nothing astonishing. After collecting a portion of the
hair he deposited it carefully in his pocket-book, deposited the book
just as carefully in his breast-pocket, and then climbed out of the
quarry and marched away towards the township; and the crowd, relieved
from the restraint imposed by the law as personified in him, gathered
about the stone and examined it wisely, discovering a much longer and
more significant sermon in it than Downy had ever suspected, and finding
marrow-freezing suggestiveness in the marks of rust upon the face of the
rock, which were declared by common consent to be bloodstains. Waddy
confidently expected the gold-stealing case to culminate in the discovery
of a particularly atrocious murder, and Ephraim Shine was selected as the
probable victim. It was held by many that so good a man as the
superintendent had seemed to be could not reasonably be suspected of
consorting with a sinner like Joe Rogers with criminal intentions, and
the idea that he had been murdered by the real thieves under peculiarly
shocking circumstances was held to be more feasible, and was, in addition
to that, highly satisfactory from a dramatic point of view.

The investigations of the people stopped short at the entrance to the
shaft, where Peterson mounted guard and warned them off in the name of
the law, and meanwhile Hardy and McKnight were pegging out the land
preparatory to applying for a lease.

Downy went straight from the quarry to Shine's house, and, much to his
surp