mpton was another man--his clerk or something of that sort?"

"He did," agreed Breton. "He insists on it."

"Then this fellow Chamberlayne must have been the man," said Spargo.
"He came to Market Milcaster from the north. What'll be done with those
papers?" he asked, turning to the officials.

"We are going to seal them up at once, and take them to London,"
replied the principal person in authority. "They will be quite safe,
Mr. Spargo; have no fear. We don't know what they may reveal."

"You don't, indeed!" said Spargo. "But I may as well tell you that I
have a strong belief that they'll reveal a good deal that nobody dreams
of, so take the greatest care of them."

Then, without waiting for further talk with any one, Spargo hurried
Breton out of the cemetery. At the gate, he seized him by the arm.

"Now, then, Breton!" he commanded. "Out with it!"

"With what?"

"You promised to tell me something--a great deal, you said--if we found
that coffin empty. It is empty. Come on--quick!"

"All right. I believe I know where Elphick and Cardlestone can be
found. That's all."

"All! It's enough. Where, then, in heaven's name?"

"Elphick has a queer little place where he and Cardlestone sometimes go
fishing--right away up in one of the wildest parts of the Yorkshire
moors. I expect they've gone there. Nobody knows even their names
there--they could go and lie quiet there for--ages."

"Do you know the way to it?"

"I do--I've been there."

Spargo motioned him to hurry.

"Come on, then," he said. "We're going there by the very first train
out of this. I know the train, too--we've just time to snatch a
mouthful of breakfast and to send a wire to the _Watchman_, and then
we'll be off. Yorkshire!--Gad, Breton, that's over three hundred miles
away!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

FORESTALLED

Travelling all that long summer day, first from the south-west of
England to the Midlands, then from the Midlands to the north, Spargo
and Breton came late at night to Hawes' Junction, on the border of
Yorkshire and Westmoreland, and saw rising all around them in the
half-darkness the mighty bulks of the great fells which rise amongst
that wild and lonely stretch of land. At that hour of the night and
amidst that weird silence, broken only by the murmur of some adjacent
waterfall the scene was impressive and suggestive; it seemed to Spargo
as if London were a million miles away, and the rush and bustle of
human life a thing