Tracks in the Snow

which he seemed about to strike his master, but to refrain upon catching sight of Callaghan’s powerful frame beside him, then subsiding again into surliness and finally withdrawing to his own cottage with muttered curses and a savage threat. This was the substance of Callaghan’s statement. But there was a great deal in it besides substance; the whole of the conversation, from the moment at which Callaghan came up, was professedly repeated word for word with a slight but dramatic touch of mimicry, and the tone and temper of master and man were vividly rendered. I can never myself remember the words of any conversation, and for that reason I am unable now to set out Callaghan’s narrative, and was unable at the time to put faith in its accuracy. Here and there a phrase was presumably truly given because it was given in Trethewy’s own dialect, but once at least the unhappy Trethewy was made responsible for a remark which he surely never made, for it was pure Irish, and indeed I think it was the very threat of picturesque vengeance which I had myself heard Callaghan address to a big boy in the street who was on the point of thrashing a little boy. One detail of the description was a manifest mistake. Callaghan indicated (truly, I have some reason to think) the spot in the drive where such altercation as did happen took place, but he added that Peters stood watching Trethewy with his hand upon a young tree. Now Peters had planted that tree with Trethewy several days later, just before the frost set in; and other details in the story seemed equally incredible. “Ever since then,” concluded Callaghan, “I have seen murder in that fellow’s eye. Mind you, I have had to do with murderers in India. Three times have I marked that look in a man’s eye, and each time the event has proved me right, though in one case it was long after. I tell you this man Trethewy⁠—” But here Vane-Cartwright stopped him. He had already disconcerted Callaghan a little by pointing out the Hibernicisms that adorned the alleged remarks of Trethewy; and now he quelled him with the just, but, as I thought, unseasonably expressed, sarcasm, that if he had seen murder portended in Trethewy’s glance it would have been a kind attention to have given his host warning of the impending doom. He went on to insist warmly on the totally different impression he had himself gathered from Trethewy’s demeanour to his master. He was not apt to say more than was needed, but this time he ran on, setting forth his own favourable view of Trethewy, till he in turn was stopped by the Sergeant who said, “Really, sir, I do not think I ought to listen now to what any gentleman thinks of a man’s manner of speaking, not if it is nothing more than that.”

The Sergeant then sent for Trethewy. I had wondered that we had not seen him before, the explanation was that he had been away at night, had returned home very late, and so had come late to the house in the morning and was still doing the pumping when the Sergeant sent for him. However, he seemed at last to have slept off the effect of whatever his nocturnal potion had been, and he gave a clear account of his movements without hesitation and with a curiously impressive gravity. He had suddenly made up his mind at dusk on the previous evening to go to his uncle’s house, where there was a gathering of friends and kinsfolk, which he had at first intended to avoid. They had made a night of it. He had started home, as several, whom he named, could testify, at four o’clock in the morning (the church clock near his uncle’s was then striking), and the violence of the snowstorm was abating. He had come across the moor by a track of which he knew the bearings well. This track struck into the grass lane which passed near the back of the house at the other side of the pasture, and which curved round into the road joining it close by Trethewy’s cottage. As he came along the lane a man on horseback leading a second horse had overtaken him and exchanged greetings with him. He had seen the man before, but could not tell his name or dwelling or where he was going. The snow had done falling when he reached his cottage. Once home, he had turned in and slept sound till he was roused soon after eight by his wife with the news of the murder. He had seen nothing, heard nothing, guessed nothing which could throw light on the dreadful deed of the night. Trethewy was dismissed with a request from the Sergeant to keep in his house, where he could instantly be found if information was wanted from him. This he did.

The two servants were now summoned, and the Sergeant had a number of questions to ask them. The housekeeper in particular had a good deal to say about her master’s ways, the household arrangements and so forth, and seemed to find satisfaction in saying it at length. So a lot of trivial details came forth, which I, who was by this time becoming exhausted, had little patience to follow. Was the candle which was found burnt out a new candle the evening before, or a candle-end, or what? The question was asked of the housekeeper, but the housemaid answered with promptitude that it was a full new candle which she had herself put there last evening, shortly before the master went to bed. We learnt also that Peters was very irregular about going to bed; sometimes he would take a fit of sitting up, working or reading, night after night, and sometimes he would go to bed early, but always he had a book with him and lay awake for a while (often