"You will not have to listen to it," said he gently, clapping me
meanwhile on the far shoulder. "You are a good fellow, Joe, and I am
proud to count myself among your friends. You have a sort of sneaking
liking for the Old Hayfork, haven't you, Joe?"

That was the way he spoke. A fellow one couldn't be waxy with long. I
told him Yes. And I think he knew how much I liked him by what it cost
me to get it out.

"Yes, Joe, we do very well," he went on, "and I dare say you have not
forgotten the time I sent you up the drain pipe, and the little rings
you found?"

The matter had never wholly slipped my memory, though, of course, the
losing of my father and Elsie one after the other--mystery piled on
mystery, as it were--had made me think less often about it.

I told him so.

"Well," said he, "I know more about it now, though--as you say--not yet
all. It is necessary to wait a little before I have all the strings in
my hands. This, however, I will tell you. The little rings you found
were those of the mail bags which were stolen out of Harry Foster's
cart! They had been half fused in a furnace and afterwards hidden in
the place where you found them."

"But--but----" I faltered. "Do you think that--that Harry Foster was
there too--up there where I went--in the tunnel which led from the
Backwater?"

He shook his head.

"No," he said, "the rings had passed through some sort of a furnace.
So almost certainly would poor Harry."

He paused for a moment, but I knew full well what he was thinking--it
was about my father.

"But why not hand the whole over to the police, if you know all that
about the people at Deep Moat Grange?"

He laid his hand on mine and patted it.

"I learned long ago not to confound the innocent with the guilty," he
said. "Besides, it is only now that even I begin to see little more
clearly. And the police did little enough when they were here. I
suppose you would have me deliver the rings to old Codling, and see him
crawl up the tunnel as you did?"

I saw that it was no use to contradict Mr. Ablethorpe for the present.
He had still the detective fever upon him, and his manoeuvring had been
for the purpose of getting the poor "naturals" out of harm's way, when
he should be ready to denounce the guilty.

"By the way," he said, "do you know that for the moment I am at a
standstill? Old Hobby Stennis has gone off on one of his journeys.
And till he comes back I can do nothing. Your