up."

We struck off into the wood, where last year's dead leaves made the
footprints almost indistinguishable, and followed the faint double track
for a long distance between the dense clumps of bushes. Suddenly my eye
caught, beside the double trail, a third row of tracks, smaller in size
and closer together. Thorndyke had seen them, too, and already his
measuring-tape was in his hand.

"Eleven and a half inches to the stride," said he. "That will be the
boy, Jervis. But the light is getting weak. We must press on quickly, or
we shall lose it."

Some fifty yards farther on, the man's tracks ceased abruptly, but the
small ones continued alone; and we followed them as rapidly as we could
in the fading light.

"There can be no reasonable doubt that these are the child's tracks,"
said Thorndyke; "but I should like to find a definite footprint to make
the identification absolutely certain."

A few seconds later he halted with an exclamation, and stooped on one
knee. A little heap of fresh earth from the surface-burrow of a mole had
been thrown up over the dead leaves; and fairly planted on it was the
clean and sharp impression of a diminutive foot, with a rubber heel
showing a central star. Thorndyke drew from his pocket a tiny shoe, and
pressed it on the soft earth beside the footprint; and when he raised it
the second impression was identical with the first.

"The boy had two pairs of shoes exactly alike," he said, "so I borrowed
one of the duplicate pair."

He turned, and began to retrace his steps rapidly, following our own
fresh tracks, and stopping only once to point out the place where the
unknown man had picked the child up. When we regained the path we
proceeded without delay until we emerged from the wood within a hundred
yards of the cottage.

"I see Mrs. Haldean has been here with Giles," remarked Thorndyke, as he
pushed open the garden-gate. "I wonder if they saw anybody."

He advanced to the door, and having first rapped with his knuckles and
then kicked at it vigorously, tried the handle.

"Locked," he observed, "but I see the key is in the lock, so we can get
in if we want to. Let us try the back."

The back door was locked, too, but the key had been removed.

"He came out this way, evidently," said Thorndyke. "though he went in at
the front, as I suppose you noticed. Let us see where he went."

The back garden was a small, fenced patch of ground, with an earth path
leading down to the back g