o the pit. Although thin, I should say he is
a man of great physical strength. It is astonishing to think, in looking
back over all the circumstances of this extraordinary case, that some
suspicion was not diverted to him in the first instance. He was very
hard-pressed for money, and he knew for days beforehand that Mr.
Glenthorpe was going to draw L300 from the bank--a circumstance that
Penreath could not possibly have known when he sought chance shelter at
the inn that night. He was the only person in the place tall enough to
have smashed the gas globe and incandescent burner in Mr. Glenthorpe's
room by striking his head against it. He knew the run of the place and
the way to the pit intimately--far better than a stranger like Penreath
could. I was struck with that fact when we were examining the
footprints. The undeviating course from the inn to the mouth of the pit
suggested an intimate acquaintance with the way. The man who carried the
body to the pit in the darkness knew every inch of the ground.

"It is easy to be wise after the event, but my thoughts and suspicions
were centering more and more around the innkeeper when Penreath was
arrested. His attitude altered the whole aspect of the case. His
hesitating answers to me in the wood, his fatalistic acceptance of the
charge against him, seemed to me equivalent to a confession of guilt,
so I abandoned my investigations and returned to Durrington.

"I was wrong. It was a mistake for which I find it difficult to forgive
myself. Penreath's hesitation, his silence--what were they in the
balance of probabilities in such a strange deep crime as this murder? In
view of the discoveries I had already made--discoveries which pointed to
a most baffling mystery--I should not have allowed myself to be swerved
from my course by Penreath's silence in the face of accusation,
inexplicable though it appeared at the time. You know what happened
subsequently. Penreath, persisting in his silence, was tried, convicted,
and sentenced to death--because of that silence, which compelled the
defence to rely on a defence of insanity which they could not sustain.

"I went back to the inn a second time, not of my own volition, but
because of a story told me by the innkeeper's daughter, Peggy, at
Durrington four days ago. The night before the inquest Peggy paid a
visit to the room in which the murdered man lay. I did not see her go
in, but I saw her come out. She went downstairs and hurried acr