t
credible, Mr. Holmes?"

"Well, you put the case strongly," my friend replied thoughtfully. "It
certainly needs a good deal of justification. May I ask, Mr. White
Mason, whether you examined the farther side of the moat at once to see
if there were any signs of the man having climbed out from the water?"

"There were no signs, Mr. Holmes. But it is a stone ledge, and one
could hardly expect them."

"No tracks or marks?"

"None."

"Ha! Would there be any objection, Mr. White Mason, to our going down
to the house at once? There may possibly be some small point which
might be suggestive."

"I was going to propose it, Mr. Holmes; but I thought it well to put
you in touch with all the facts before we go. I suppose if anything
should strike you--" White Mason looked doubtfully at the amateur.

"I have worked with Mr. Holmes before," said Inspector MacDonald. "He
plays the game."

"My own idea of the game, at any rate," said Holmes, with a smile. "I
go into a case to help the ends of justice and the work of the police.
If I have ever separated myself from the official force, it is because
they have first separated themselves from me. I have no wish ever to
score at their expense. At the same time, Mr. White Mason, I claim the
right to work in my own way and give my results at my own
time--complete rather than in stages."

"I am sure we are honoured by your presence and to show you all we
know," said White Mason cordially. "Come along, Dr. Watson, and when
the time comes we'll all hope for a place in your book."

We walked down the quaint village street with a row of pollarded elms
on each side of it. Just beyond were two ancient stone pillars,
weather-stained and lichen-blotched bearing upon their summits a
shapeless something which had once been the rampant lion of Capus of
Birlstone. A short walk along the winding drive with such sward and
oaks around it as one only sees in rural England, then a sudden turn,
and the long, low Jacobean house of dingy, liver-coloured brick lay
before us, with an old-fashioned garden of cut yews on each side of it.
As we approached it, there was the wooden drawbridge and the beautiful
broad moat as still and luminous as quicksilver in the cold, winter
sunshine.

Three centuries had flowed past the old Manor House, centuries of
births and of homecomings, of country dances and of the meetings of fox
hunters. Strange that now in its old age this dark business should have
cast its