where the fugitive had emerged from the fir plantation over some iron hurdles into Peters’ field and along a little sort of gulley that there ran from the plantation halfway along the field. “Not the best place to break cover, but their wits are not always about them,” said the Superintendent, and he pointed to a wedge-shaped snowless tract which, caused by some extra shelter from the wind, extended from the wall, tapering towards a clump of gorse bushes. Then he sped on the trail, making the rest of us spread out to make sure that there were no other tracks across the field. Southwards, right along the field, the trail led till he, and we rejoining him, scrambled out of the field, where our quarry must have scrambled, into the green lane about two hundred yards from Trethewy’s cottage. Thus far, but no farther; along the now well-trodden snow of the lane it was idle to look for the print of any particular foot. “I am thinking of the hours of lost daylight,” said the Superintendent, now depressed. “Was this a likely way for a man making for the moors, Rector?” “You need not look that far,” said Callaghan; “those footprints were the man Trethewy’s. Down at the cottage yonder,” he added for the Superintendent’s benefit. “They are the track of hobnailed boots, sir,” said the Superintendent, “that’s all that they are.” “Do you see that pattern?” said Callaghan; and there was something odd about the pattern of the nails in the last footprint just beneath our eyes. “You never saw it in any footprint before, but I did, and it is the pattern I saw in Trethewy’s footmark not a fortnight ago when last there was snow.” He was strung up again now, and he had strangely quick eyes when he was strung up. “That is the man’s footprint,” he said, “and there are the man’s boots.” Some way along the ditch, under brambles and among old kettles and sardine tins and worn-out boots (for plentiful rubbish had been dumped just here), lay quite a good pair of boots, old boots truly, but not boots that I should have thrown away, whatever a poorer man might do. The Superintendent had them instantly. “Odd they are so full of snow,” said Callaghan; “he did not lace them or they were much too big for him. But what possessed him to throw them away, anyhow?” “Oh,” said the Superintendent, “they mostly have plenty of half-clever ideas. It takes a stupid one to escape me, sir,” he interposed to me with a sort of chuckle, for he had lost no more time in appropriating the discovery than he had done in picking up the boots. “The clever idea this time,” he added, “was just this—the lane is trampled enough now, but in the morning, when fewer feet had been along it, you might have picked out the print of a particular boot by careful looking. But a fellow in his socks could shuffle along among the few footmarks and make no trace that you could swear to; only he would not go far like that by daylight when the people he passed would notice his feet. Of course it was madness not to hide the boots better, but I expect he had taken a good deal of liquor to screw himself up to his work. Is that
Mr. Trethewy’s house, sir?” for we were by this time close to it.
I had been keen enough, as any man would have been, from the moment we saw the ladder till now, but I hope it will be easily understood why I did not accompany the hunters to Trethewy’s cottage. I went back to the house to find Vane-Cartwright, who had stayed there, as it seemed, reading gloomily and intently all the afternoon, and to arrange for the prompt removal of him and Callaghan from that now cheerless house to the Rectory. The housekeeper, oddly enough, was quite ready to stay, and she kept the housemaid with her.
Callaghan, who soon came back, said that Trethewy had come to the door of his house when they knocked. “Mr. Trethewy,” said the Superintendent, “do you know these boots?” He answered composedly enough, “They look like my boots, but I do not know where you found them.” Here Mrs. Trethewy came forward and said in a very unconvincing tone (so Callaghan insisted), “Why, that is the pair I have looked for high and low these three days. Do not you remember, Reuben, how angry you were they were lost?”
We left the house for the Rectory soon (my man was to come with a barrow for the luggage), but before we left, one further piece of evidence had accidentally come to my knowledge. I learnt from something which the housekeeper was saying to the maid that the ladder was one which was always kept in the pump-house, that the pump-house was always kept locked, and that Trethewy kept the key.
V
On Wednesday, the 2nd of February, Candlemas Day, I read the burial service over my friend’s body. I will not dwell upon what that service was to me, but like many funerals of my friends it is associated in my mind with the singing of birds. The inquest had taken place on the Monday and Tuesday, and while it clearly established the fact that the death had been caused by murder, not suicide, nothing was laid before the jury which would have justified a verdict against any particular person. I believe that some doubt had arisen as to the identification of the boots. The village shoemaker, whose expert opinion was asked, had said that though he never arranged hobnails in that way himself, he had seen the same arrangement in boots that had been brought to him to be repaired, by some man who was not Trethewy. Later on, however, it was ascertained, I fancy through Callaghan’s ingenuity, that Trethewy, who liked dabbling
