urderer Hobby,' then I was safe from all the rest. But so curious a
thing is man, and so much harder to bear is scorn than the worst
accusation of crime, that it was often on my tongue tip to jolt his
self-complaisance with a little inkling of the truth.

"All the same, I laid it all up against him--some day I would catch him
coming home with a goodly sum. So, after long thought, I arranged that
a letter should be sent to warn him that one Steve Cairney, a slippery
'dealer' who had long owed him a large amount, would be at the Longtown
Fair to sell horses, and that it was now or never. The thing was true.
Nothing, indeed, could be truer. Jeremy was forewarned, and all should
have passed off easily and fitly as the drawing on of an old glove.
But because that fool Jeremy had seen instruments of music (of which he
is inordinately fond) by the score and gross in Yarrow's shop down at
Breckonside, he must needs put the man into a cell behind the Monks'
Oven, instead of finishing the matter out of hand. Aphra also mixed
herself up in the affair, urging Yarrow, who must have had an excellent
idea where he was, to sign the cheque they had found on him, as if that
made any difference! I know a man in Luxembourg who will give
two-thirds value on a cheque drawn on a sound account, and, in
addition, provide the signature from any reasonable copy. It is never
the first owners who lose with such things. There were plenty of
Yarrow's receipted bills about the house, and there need have been no
difficulty about that. But unhappily I was from home, and so
everything went to pigs and whistles.

"Then it pleased Miss Orrin to take a violent jealousy of my
granddaughter, Elsie Stennis, and to sequester her somewhere about the
premises, which, of course, brought the storm about our ears in full
force. With this folly, worse than any crime, I am glad to record that
I had nothing whatever to do. Doubtless the business was carried out
by Jeremy under the orders of his sister Aphra. I have at least this
to be thankful for, that as long as I retained the full and entire
direction of affairs Deep Moat Grange might have been called the vale
of peace and plenty.

"Then came Parson Ablethorpe, who in collusion, most likely, with his
missionary associate--De la Poer, I think he calls himself--spirited
off the women, Aphra last of all. It was a case of rats leaving a
sinking ship. Had it not been for the loss of Miss Aphra, for whose