“A fine wild-goose chase this,” said one of the constables.  He had not spoken before, but had toiled along on his horse at the obvious expenditure of much physical energy and more temper.

“Grumbling again, Jonathan; when will you be content?” The speaker was a little man with keen eyes, a supercilious smile, a shrill sharp voice, and peevish manners.

“Not while I’m in danger of breaking my neck every step, or being lost on a moor nearly as trackless as an ocean, or swallowed up in mists like the clouds of steam in a century of washing days, or drowned in the soapsuds of ugly, gaping pits,—­tarns you call them, I believe.  And all for nothing, too,—­not so much as the glint of a bad guinea will we get out of this fine job.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” said the little man.  “If this blockhead here,” with a lurch of the head backwards to where the blacksmith rode behind, “hasn’t blundered in his ‘reckonings,’ we’ll bag the game yet.”

“That you never will, mark my words.  I’ve taken the measure of our man before to-day.  He’s enough for fifty such as our precious guide.  I knew what I was doing when I went back last time and left him.”

“Ah, they rather laughed at you then, didn’t they?—­hinted you were a bit afraid,” said the little man, with a cynical smile.

“They may laugh again, David, if they like; and the man that laughs loudest, let him be the first to come in my place next bout; he’ll be welcome.”

“Well, I must say, this is strange language.  I never talked like that, never.  It’s in contempt of duty, nothing less,” said Constable David.

“Oh, you’re the sort of man that sticks the thing you call duty above everything else—­above wife, life, and all the rest of it—­and when duty’s done with you it generally sticks you below everything else.  I’ve been a fool in my time, David, but I was never a fool of that sort.  I’ve never been the dog to drop a good jawful of solids to snap at its shadow.  When I’ve been that dog I’ve quietly put my meat down on the plank, and then—­There’s another break-neck paving-stone—­’bowders’ you call them.  No horse alive could keep its feet in such country.”

The three men rode some distance in silence.  Then the little man, who kept a few yards in front, drew up and said,—­

“You say the warrant was not on Wilson’s body when you searched it.  Is it likely that some of these dalesmen removed it before you came down?”

“Yes, one dalesman.  But that job must have been done when another bigger job was done.  It wasn’t done afterwards.  I was down next morning.  I was sent after the old Scotchman.”

“Didn’t it occur to you that the man to whose interest it was to have that warrant had probably got hold of it?”

“Yes; and that he’d burnt it, too.  A man doesn’t from choice carry a death-warrant next his heart.  It would make a bad poultice.”

“What now,” cried the little man to the blacksmith, who had been listening to the conversation, and in his amazement and confusion had unconsciously pulled at the reins of his horse, and brought it to a stand.