'Yair,' Cleave agreed sadly. 'That he must be, poor ole beggar. He were old when I'as a child, and used to come across him digging his'oles or writin' down zongs. Fey old fellow. I remember thinking oncet, he looked like God in Paradise, 'walkin' in the garden at the end of the day.' Proud and amused. So, he wants to knaw what happened to ole Josiah, mmm?'
'Yes,' said Holmes. 'Yes, he does.'
'And his legs won't carry him no more, is it? Pity, that. It's been a mort of years since he's been up the moor. Still, he'd be inter'sted, acourse. Wisht I could tell you what you want to knaw, but all I knaw is, Josiah was a- makin' 'is way out along Hew Down on the Sattiday night, we exchanged a word or two, and we both went our ways. I never saw nothin' like this 'ghostly carridge' they be talkin' of. Nothin' 'tall.'
'What did Gorton say to you?'
' 'Tweren't nothin' much. Just 'Evening' and a word on the weather, which were thundery and low and lookin' to spit down but wasn't yet, and I offered him the barn if he needed a roof, but he said no, and 'Wish 'ee well' it was.'
'Did he say he had a place to stay? I shouldn't think there are many farms in that direction.'
' 'Fore dark he'd only have made it to Drake Hill, but he didna'. Drake hisself telled me.'
'And after dark?'
' 'Tweren't no moon to speak of, and he wasn't carrying a lantern, but I s'pose I thought he was heading for one of his old mines. There's some still have buildings you could shelter in, if you wasn't too particular. That's right, that's what I figgered, because he said he would'n take my barn, he was lookin' to earn hisself a week's beer money.'
'His precise words?'
'Near 'nough. Zomething about buyin' me a pint when next he seed me. Any row, he liked 'is zecrets and his findings, did Josiah, so I leaved 'im to it.'
'Did he often buy you a drink?'
'Never in mortal memory.'
'Interesting.'
' 'E were a good'n, were Josiah. Kept hisself to hisself, 'side from zingin' all they ole zongs over 'is ale, but 'e 'ad 'is pride, and look as 'e might like a gipsy, 'e were as honest as the day be long. An' though he liked to keep to hisself, he were willin' to help out, in a pinch. The maid took ill one year just at the height of lambin' and ole Josiah nursed 'er for two days 'til she were hersel' again. A good man, that. He'll be missed.'
As a eulogy, one could do far worse.
We drank more tea, and Holmes questioned him further about the precise location and directions he and Gorton had taken. When a commotion sounded out in the yard and a girl of perhaps twelve burst in, Holmes allowed the farmer to return to his cow and the veterinarian, and before we could be pressed into surgical assistance to a bovine midwife, we took our leave.
***
A half hour brought us to the place where Cleave had seen Gorton, and another forty minutes to the Drake farm. It was down in a valley bottom, and we stood on the rise looking down at it. A more dismal site, or a more disreputable set of buildings, would have been hard to imagine. Even the trickle of smoke from the lopsided chimney seemed dirtier than usual.
To my surprise, Holmes turned his back on the farm and began to survey the ground that fell away from our hillock on all sides.
'Aren't we going down there?' I asked him.
'Gould thought it unnecessary. Unless Drake himself did away with Gorton, he would have no reason to lie about not seeing him, and according to Gould, Drake hasn't the wits to build a wall, much less arrange for a clever murder. And you'll have to admit, a man who can't bother to keep his chimney clean and is willing to live in the undoubtedly foul atmosphere that exists inside that house down there is hardly likely to go to the inconvenience of hauling a body to the other side of the moor. He'd be more inclined just to toss it down a nearby hole. Come.'
I stared at his back as he descended the hill away from the Drake farm. '
He turned and gave me an unreadable look. 'When I found an amateur who knew his ground better than I knew London. I told you, Russell, he was my local informant.'
It sounded to me as if the good Reverend Sabine was something more than that, but I could not begin to guess what.
We wandered back and forth across the landscape like a pair of tin seekers, climbing down to examine every low-lying place and streambed, stubbing our toes, twisting our ankles, and breaking our fingernails on the stones, catching our clothing on the gorse bushes, and developing cricks in our necks from the hunch-shouldered position adopted in the vain attempt to keep the rain from our collars. The wind began to rise, which dispersed the lower clouds but chilled me more than the rain had, and made it nearly impossible to avoid the increasingly near- horizontal drops. Dusk was gathering when I looked up from my regular occupation of scraping the sides of my muddy boots against a rock, and found Holmes gone. He had been there a minute before, so I knew he could not have gone far, but it was disconcerting to feel even for an instant that I was alone in that desolation. I called, but the wind snatched my words from my lips, then blinded me by driving the rain into my face. I made myself stop, and think.
After a minute I wiped the worst of the rain from my spectacles, and studied the land around me before making my way back to where I had last seen Holmes. Looking down into a deep, sharp-sided ravine with its complement of peat-brown water at the bottom, I saw his back disappearing around a bend. I called, but he did not hear me, so I was forced to follow him along the top of the ground; when he set off up a branch of the ravine I was obliged to scramble down into the depths as well.
I panted up to him some time later, and tried to catch my breath before I addressed him. 'We're not going to
