“By express rider, and with orders to leave a description of the man at all the ferries.  But there’s more to come.  The man, that had seemed at first in a desperate hurry, was no sooner in Bogue’s clothes than he took a seat, made Bogue fetch another glass of grog and drink it with him, and asked him a score of questions about the best road eastward.  It struck Bogue that, for a man whose home was Saltash, he knew very little about his native county.  All this while he appeared to have forgotten his hurry, and Bogue was thinking to make him an excuse to go off and attend to other customers, when of a sudden he ups and shakes hands, says good night, and marches out of the house.  Bogue told me all this in the very room where it happened.  It opens out on the passage leading from the taproom to the front door.  I asked Bogue if he could remember at what time Coffin left the house, and by what door; also, if the prisoner-fellow heard him leave; but at first he couldn’t tell me anything for certain except that Coffin went out by the front door—­he remembered hearing him go tapping down the passage.  The old man, it seems, had a curious way of tapping with his stick.”

Here Mr. Rogers looked at me, and I nodded.

“Where was the landlord when he heard this?” asked Miss Belcher.

“That, my dear Lydia, was naturally the next question I put to him.  ‘Why, in this very room,’ said he, ‘now I come to think of it.’  ‘Well, then,’ said I, ’how long did you stay in this room after the prisoner (as we’ll call him) had taken his leave?’ ‘Not a minute,’ said he; ’no, nor half a minute.  Indeed, I believe we walked out into the passage together, and then parted, he going out to the door, and I up the passage to the taproom.’  ’Was Coffin in the taproom when you reached it?’ I asked.  ‘No,’ says Bogue; ’to be sure he wasn’t.’  ‘Why, then, you thickhead,’ says I, ’he must have left while you were talking with the prisoner; and since you heard him go, the odds are the prisoner heard him, too.’  That’s the way to get at evidence, Lydia.”

“My dear Jack,” said Miss Belcher, “you’re an Argus!”

“Well, I flatter myself it was pretty neat,” resumed Mr. Rogers, speaking with his mouth full; “but, as it happens, we don’t need it.  For when, as I’ve told you, we drove around to the ferry at Percuil, and the ferryman described Coffin and how he’d put him across, the first question I asked was ’Did you put any one else across that night?’ He said, ‘Yes; and not twenty minutes later.’  ’Man or woman?’ I asked.  ‘Man,’ said he, ’and a d—­d drunk one’—­saving your presence, ladies.  I pricked up my ears.  ‘Drunk?’ I asked.  How drunk?’ ‘Drunk enough to near-upon drown himself,’ said the ferryman.  ’It was this way, sir:  I’d scarcely finished mooring the boat again, and was turning to go indoors, when I heard a splash, t’other side of the creek, where; the path comes down under the loom of the trees, and, next moment,