abriel lingered a moment, and then, lifting his hat again, began to
move forward towards the town.

"I should advise you to acquaint the police, Mr. Neale," he said.
"Good-morning!"

He marched away, stiffly upright, across the bridge and up the
Cornmarket, and Neale and Betty followed.

"Why did you tell--him?" asked Betty.

Neale threw a glance of something very like scorn after the retreating
figure.

"Wanted to see how he'd take it!" he answered. "Bah!--Gabriel
Chestermarke's no better than a wax figure! You might as well tell a
marble image any news of this sort as tell him! You'd have thought he'd
have had sufficient human feeling in him to say that he hoped it wasn't
your uncle, anyhow!"

"No, I shouldn't," said Betty. "I sized Gabriel up--and Joseph,
too--when I walked into their parlour the other afternoon. They haven't
any feelings--you might as well expect to get feeling out of a fish."

They met Starmidge in the Market-Place--talking to Parkinson. Neale told
the news to both. The journalist dashed into his office for his hat, and
made off to Ellersdeane Hollow: Starmidge turned to the police-station
with his information.

"No one else knows, I suppose?" he remarked, as they went along.

"Gabriel Chestermarke knows," answered Neale. "We met him as we were
coming off the moor and I told him."

"Show any surprise?" asked the detective.

"Neither surprise nor anything else," said Neale. "Absolutely
unaffected!"

Polke, hearing the news, immediately bustled into activity, sending for
a cab in which to drive along the road to a point near Ellersdeane
Tower, from which they could reach the lead mine. But he shook his head
when he saw that Betty meant to return.

"Don't, miss!" he urged. "Stay here in town--you'd far better. It's not
a nice job for ladies, aught of that sort. Wait at the hotel--do, now!"

"Doing nothing!" exclaimed Betty. "That would be far worse. Let me
go--I'm not afraid of anything. And to hang about, waiting and
wondering--"

Neale, who had been about to enter the cab with the police, drew back.

"You go on," he said to Polke. "Get things through--Miss Fosdyke and I
will walk slowly back there. We won't come close up till you can tell us
something definite. Don't you see she's anxious about her uncle?--we
can't keep her waiting."

He rejoined Betty as Polke and his men drove off: together they turned
again in the direction of the bridge. Once across it and on the moor,
Nea