point higher up the Valley, he caught sight of a man whose objective was evidently Mortover Grange.
As this man came nearer, Wedgwood saw him to be a shepherd, accompanied by a lurcher dog, and when the man turned in at the gate of the courtyard he hurried down to the door to meet him. The two women and Mr. Patello had also seen him coming and were at the door before Wedgwood; the man was already speaking to them when he got there.
"So Mrs. Baxter, up there at the Drovers' Arms, seeing as I was coming this way, she said would I just drop in and see if Mr. Philip had got home all right," he was saying. "'Cause, of course, the storm was that bad when he left there———"
"Mr. Philip isn't here at all," answered Mattie Patello. "He's never been home!" She turned to Wedgwood, helplessly. "You talk to him!" she said. "I don't understand———"
"You've come down from the Drovers' Arms, eh?" asked Wedgwood. "Just now?"
"Why, it's taken me an hour or two getting down, sir," answered the man. "But I had to come down this way, storm or no storm, and I called in at the Drovers' Arms as I was passing, and the landlady, Mrs. Baxter, she said
