Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/308

 "And the night was pretty bad?"

"It were bad enough for me, mister, and my road home from there is pretty plain sailing! It would be worse down this way. And it depends, of course, which way he took, to come home by. If he came down the road, same that I've fared by this morning, he could have got through, likely, if he hadn't tumbled into a ditch by the roadside. But if he went t'other way"—he stopped, shaking his head. "Bad enough on any dark night is that way," he said, "but in a storm like this"

"What way's that?" asked Wedgwood.

The man turned from the door and pointed up the valley towards the range of hills on its further side.

"You see right up yonder, mister, where there's a cleft in the hillside, and the top of a house standing clear against the sky?" he asked. "That's the Drovers' Arms—the highroad from Harslow to Ruxton crosses there. Well, the short cut here is from just behind the inn all along that hillside—nothing more than a bridlepath, it is, and needs care in following it at night. And there's old quarries all along there—old, disused stone-quarries. In this snow"

"He could easily have fallen over?" said Wedgwood. "Is that it?"