ge?" The barmaid smiled again.

"That's it. Good-night."

"Good night," chorused the hoarse voices.

The night outside was as black as a pocket.

"Better cut along by the fields, Dollops," whispered Cleek as they took
to their heels up the rough road. "Got to pass him. This mist will help
us. That was a near shave about the haystack. I nearly tripped us up
there. Awful creature, that woman!"

"Looks like a jelly-fish come loose," threw in Dollops with a snort.
"There's ole Borkins, sir, straight ahead. 'Ere--in through this gap in
this edge and then across the field by the side of 'im.... Weren't such a
rough night after all, was it, sir?"

Cleek sighed. One might almost have thought that he regretted the fact.

"No, Dollops," he said, softly, "it was the calmest night of its kind
I've ever experienced. But we've gleaned something from it. But what the
devil has Borkins got to _do_ with this factory? What ever it is he's
in it right up to the neck, and we'll have to dig around him pretty
carefully. You'll help me, Dollops, won't you? Can't do without you, you
know."

"Orlways, sir--orlways," breathed Dollops, in a husky whisper. "Where you
goes, I'm a-hikin' along by yer side. You ain't ever going ter get rid of
me."

"Good lad!" and they redoubled their pace.

CHAPTER XX

AT THE INQUEST

Thursday dawned in a blaze of sunshine, and after the bleak promise of
the day before the sky was a clear, sapphire-blue.

"What a day! And what a mission to waste it on!" sighed Cleek next
morning, as he finished breakfast and took a turn to the front door,
smoking his cigarette. "Here's murder at the very door of this ill-fated
place. And we've got to see the thing out!"

He spun upon his heel and went back again into the gloomy hall, as though
the sight of the sunshine sickened him. His thoughts were with Merriton,
shut away there in the village prison to await this day of reckoning,
with, if the word should go against him, a still further day of reckoning
ahead. A day when the cleverest brains of the law schools would be
arrayed against him, and he would have to go through the awful tragedy
of a trial in open court. What was a mere coroner's jury to that
possibility?

Then too, perhaps in spite of evidence, they might let the boy off. There
was a chance in that matter of the I.O.U., which he himself had found in
the pocket of the dead man, and which was signed in the name of Lester
Stark. Stark was due a