" said I, cheerfully.

And he wrote something, and sealed, or, rather licked it, in an
envelope which he had used for carrying his cards in. It was on one of
these that he had written his confession. He went off home in a great
hurry to put the thingborium into his safe, and I opened the letter to
Mr. De la Poer behind the trunk of the first big tree.

All it said was just--

DEAR DE LA POER,--I have to communicate to you, under the seal of the
confessional, that I have learned nothing whatever concerning Mr.
Yarrow, of Breckonside village, at the house of Deep Moat Grange or
elsewhere.

Yours truly,
R. ABLETHORPE.

So once more I had drawn blank.

CHAPTER XX

CONCERNING ELSIE

Now, I liked Mr. Ablethorpe, but after he had wrestled like that with
his conscience, just to tell me that he knew nothing about the
matter--well, I could have gone back and felled him. Why, his old
conscience couldn't have made more fuss if he had known all about the
murder--the hiding of the body--of a score of bodies, indeed. But
then, with consciences, a fellow like me can't tell. It's like love,
or sea-sickness, or toothache. If a fellow has never had them, he's no
judge of the sufferings of those who have.

And that's what I always say to people when I hear of some new caper of
the Hayfork Parson, or Rev. De la Poer, or any of that lot. "It's
conscience," I say. "It takes them like that. It's uncommon, I grant,
in Breckonside, but they've got it. So take a back seat, boys, and
wait till the flurry's over!"

I am not going to go into detail of the search for my father, because
what with the search for Harry Foster, and my father, and all that is
yet to come, the book would just be all about folk trying to find out
the mystery of the house on the farther side of the Deep Moat, and
coming back, as they say in Breckonside, with their finger in their
mouth.

Briefly, then, everybody searched and searched, but all to no purpose.
Mad Jeremy was proved to have been miles away, and Mr. Stennis safe in
Edinburgh, dining with his lawyer. He came home as full of rage as he
could stick, and he threatened to bring actions for "effraction" and
breaking open of lock-fast places, trespass, damage to property, and I
don't know what all. But none of these things came to anything.

He threatened, but did not perform. And as for me, in those days I had
enough to do with my mother, who had fallen into a frail state of bo