"You and your ideas, Carrington. First your walking over your confounded grave business and now the chance of picking up some impossible clue. It's all imagination."
The barrister laughed again, but said no more. Hendle was less amiable than usual, which was scarcely to be wondered at considering what was in his mind. He walked fast enough toward their destination, as if he wished to rid himself of disagreeable thoughts by swift movement. Shortly they came to the rickety gate, and passed up the grass-grown avenue, dank and unwholesome, and not to be warmed even by the blazing summer sun. The surroundings were the same, but the place had lost its uncanny isolating atmosphere, and there was a stir of life in house and grounds, which showed that the place was waking up. Many men were moving in and out of the open doors; there was the noise of conversation and cheerful whistling, and scaffolding was being erected against the ivy-draped walls. Even in the jungle two gardeners were at work cutting down the tall tangled forest of weeds, and opening out the spaces between the trees. Most of the men employed were strangers, but some of the village workers had been pressed into service and these greeted the Squire and his friend respectfully. Hendle nodded absently in return, then strolled through the bare house, watching the ancient paper being stripped off the walls, and the replacing of mouldering boards. Afterward he and Carrington walked into the jungle and, at the far end of a winding path, found the lichen-covered sundial, half buried among luxuriant weeds. It had not yet been disturbed.
"I say, Hendle," remarked Carrington, as they crushed the lush grasses under foot, "this dial is pretty well hidden in this jungle."
"Yes?"
"I gather from that," continued the barrister musingly, "that it would not be easy to find."
Rupert nodded. "Not unless a person knew where to find it," he answered.
"Exactly. Well then, if the assassin of Leigh was a stranger, he would never have buried the will in a place of which he knew nothing."
"You infer that the assassin of Leigh was not a stranger?"
"I do. And that makes me believe still more that Mrs. Beatson is the guilty person. She knew where to find the sundial in this tangle of greenery and in the darkness of night. Therefore she must have----"
"Oh, let us give her the benefit of the doubt," retorted the Squire, cutting short this theorizing and walking forward to peer among the weeds. "I say, here is the hole--not a very deep one."