day, thought he'd hand back those jewels as soon as possible, and set off in the evening with that intention—possibly to be robbed and murdered on the way. Sounds horrible—but honestly I can't think of any other theory."
Betty involuntarily shivered and glanced about her at the dark cavernous spaces of the wood, which had now thickened into dense masses of oak and beech. She took a firmer grip of Neale's arm.
"And he'd come through here!" she exclaimed. "How dangerous!—with those things in his pocket!"
"Oh, but he'd think nothing of it!" answered Neale. "He was used to walking at night—he knew every yard of this neighbourhood. Besides, he'd know very well that nobody would know what he had on him. What I'd like to know is—supposing my theory's right, and that he was taking these jewels to Ellersdeane, how did anybody get to know that he had them? For the Chestermarkes didn't know they'd been given to him, and I didn't—nobody at the bank knew."
A sudden turn in the path brought them to the edge of the wood, and they emerged on a broad plateau of rough grass, from beneath which a wide expanse of landscape stretched away, bathed just then in floods of moonlight. Neale paused and waved his stick towards the shadowy distances and over the low levels which lay between.
"Ellersdeane Hollow!" he said.
Betty paused too, looking silently around. She saw an undulating, broken stretch of country, half-
