e outer look of
the houses which shelter them.

Cornmarket in Scarnham lay at the further end of the street called
Finkleway. It was a queer, open space which sloped downhill from the
centre of the ridge on which the middle of the town was built to the
valley through which the little river meandered. Save where the streets,
and the road leading out to the open country and Ellersdeane cut into
it, it was completely enclosed by old houses of the sort which Starmidge
had already admired in the Market-Place: many of them half-timbered, all
of them very ancient. One or two of them were inns; some were evidently
workmen's cottages; others were better-class dwelling-houses. From the
description already furnished to him by Polke, Starmidge at once
recognized Joseph Chestermarke's abode. It was a corner house, abutting
on the road which ran out at the lower angle of this irregular space and
led down to the river and Scarnham Bridge. It was by far the biggest
house thereabouts--a tall, slender, stone-built house of many stories,
towering high above any of the surrounding gables. And save for a very
faint, dull glow which shone through the transom window of the front
door, there was not a vestige of light in a single window of the seven
stories. Cornmarket was a gloomy commonplace, thought Starmidge, but the
little oil lamps in the cottages were riotously cheery in comparison
with the darkness of the tall, gaunt Chestermarke mansion. It looked
like the abode of dead men.

Starmidge longed to knock at that door--if only to get a peep inside the
hall. But he curbed his desires and went quietly round the corner of the
house. There was a high black wall there which led down to the grassy
bank of the river. From its corner another wall ran along the
river-side, separated from the stream by a path. There was a door set in
this wall, and Starmidge, after carefully looking round in the gloom,
quietly tried it and found it securely locked.

An intense desire to see the inside of Joseph Chestermarke's garden
seized the detective. Near the door, partly overhanging the garden wall,
partly overshadowing the path and the river-bank, was a tree: Starmidge,
after listening carefully and deciding that no one was coming along the
path, made shift to climb that tree, just then bursting into full leaf.
In another minute he was amongst its middle branches, and peering
inquisitively into the garden which lay between him and the gaunt
outline of the