th
mind and body--she who had been so robust. And if it had not been for
Elsie, who took care of her, coming to our house to do it, and even
biding the night, I don't know what would have become of my mother.

You see, she had never believed that anything serious had really
happened to my father, or that he was dead. And when any one tried to
argue her out of it, she said: "Tell me, then, who it was that let the
mare into the yard?"

And we dared not give her the answer that was uppermost in all our
minds--that it was the murderer who had done it with my father's
master-key.

I did not see much of Elsie, though she was in the same house with me,
for I had the business to attend to, just as if my father was there--to
take his place, I mean. Because I knew that he would wish it, so that
if he came back he would be proud not to be able to put his finger on
anything, and say, "This has suffered in your hands, Joe!"

Of course, I had men from Scotland Yard, and others searching for a
long time. But they did no good except to prove that my father had
left the fair at Longtown in good time, carrying with him (what was
very curious) not the money in gold or notes, but a cheque payable to
bearer on the bank at Thorsby. Well, that cheque had never been
presented. This was fatal to our theory. For if my father had been
killed for booty, he could only have had an old silver watch on him,
with the guard made of porpoise bootlaces, and perhaps five or six
shillings in silver; because he always gave trysts and fairs and
markets a bad name, especially those so near the border as Longtown.
They gathered, he declared, all the riffraff of two countries, besides
all the Molly Malones and cutpurses that ever were born to be hanged.

This was all that could be got out of these wise men from London for
the money I spent--my father's money, rather. They never traced him
beyond half-way, where, at a lonely inn on the Crewe Moss, he had
stopped to drink a cup of coffee and break a bite of bread before going
farther.

Oh, I tell you that our big house, with its bricked yard, and all the
fine, new outhouses, barns, storages for grain and fodder, was a
lonesome place those days! And how much more lonesome the nights! I
tell you that, after the men had gone home, the horses been foddered
and bedded down in the stable, and the doors were locked (except the
big centre one, which my mother would not allow to be touched), Bob
Kingsman