aith enough to remove mountains," he said, "but with a
spade I can sometimes make a show at moving a molehill where it ought
to go."

We continued on over the moor toward the Brom Water, where was the
place that Poacher Davie Elshiner had done his fishing that morning of
the loss of poor Harry Foster.

I asked Mr. Ablethorpe what we were to do there, and warned him that I
had no wish to go nearer to the house of Deep Moat. So that if he
counted on visiting his penitent Miss Aphra Orrin he would have to go
alone.

"I am perturbed in my mind, and that's the truth," he said. "There is
something strange along the branch of the river which flows into the
Moat. I walked home that way yesterday, and I wish for your presence
and assistance. Two can do so much more than one. Also, you know the
locality, as well I know. I look to you to help me to solve the
mystery which, to my mind at least, hangs over Brom Water."

CHAPTER XI

THE IRON TRAPDOOR

The Hayfork Minister, who had laboured with equal determination to save
the crop of a true-blue Presbyterian and to make me a good Churchman,
evidently knew his way about the precincts of the Grange. He stepped
through a gap in the hedge, jumped a half-dry ditch, and wound his way
through the scattering brambles and underbrush as if he had been in his
own garden plot.

No coward, the Hayfork! It took me all my time to keep up with him,
and I am a good jumper, too--nearly as good as Elsie.

We went down the side of the Moat Backwater. It is a curious place.
It is not, you understand, the Brom Water itself. That comes down from
the hills and wimples away across the plain, full of good fish, both
trout and salmon, according to their season. But the Moat Backwater
connects the pond or little loch which lies in front of the windows of
the Grange with the Brom. Whether the connection is absolutely
natural, or whether it was originally made by the hand of man, I cannot
tell. Neither, so far as I know, can anybody else. But in some places
it certainly looks like the latter.

At any rate, whenever the Brom is in flood, it "backs up," as it were,
into the Backwater, and so runs into the pond. It fills the Moat
itself like a tide, and I believe on a few occasions it has even been
known to overflow the greensward where the clumps of lilies are, right
up to the steps of the front door!

There is, of course, always some water in the Lane, which trenches the
meadows