There were three stalls, and in each stall a horse stamped and fidgeted.
Only one held their attention. This was a mare on the extreme left, a
large grey animal with a curious black patch on its near shoulder. The
faces of both men changed as they recognised this distinguishing mark,
and instinctively their eyes met across the width of the open space
separating them. Hexford's finger rose to his mouth, but Sweetwater
needed no such hint. He stood, silent as his own shadow, while the
coachman rubbed away with less and less purpose, until his hands stood
quite still and his whole figure drooped in irresistible despondency. As
he raised his face, moved perhaps by that sense of a watchful presence to
which all of us are more or less susceptible, they were both surprised to
see tears on it. The next instant he had started to his feet and the bit
of harness had rattled from his hands to the floor.

"Who are you?" he asked, with a touch of anger, quite natural under the
circumstances. "Can't you come in by the door, and not creep sneaking up
to take a man at disadvantage?"

As he spoke, he dashed away the tears with which his cheeks were
still wet.

"I thought a heap of my young mistress," he added, in evident apology for
this display of what such men call weakness. "I didn't know that it was
in me to cry for anything, but I find that I can cry for her."

Hexford left his window, and Sweetwater slid from his; next minute they
met at the stable door.

"Had luck?" whispered the local officer.

"Enough to bring me here," acknowledged the other.

"Do you mean to this house or to this stable?"

"To this stable."

"Have you heard that the horse was out that night?"

"Yes, she was out."

"Who driving?"

"Ah, that's the question!"

"This man can't tell you."

A jerk of Hexford's thumb in Zadok's direction emphasised this statement.

"But I'm going to talk to him, for all that."

"He wasn't here that night; he was at a dance. He only knows that the
mare was out."

"But I'm going to talk to him."

"May I come in, too? I'll not interrupt. I've just fifteen minutes
to spare."

"You can do as you please. I've nothing to hide--from you, at any rate."

Which wasn't quite true; but Sweetwater wasn't a stickler for truth,
except in the statements he gave his superiors.

Hexford threw open the stable-door, and they both walked in. The coachman
was not visible, but they could hear him moving about above, grumbling t