"Pardon me, that does not give you the right to intrude here with these outspoken suspicions."
"I think it does. The suspicions are abroad, James Castlemaine; ignore the fact to yourself as you may. Your name is cautiously used: people must be cautious, you know: not used at all perhaps in any way that could be laid hold of. One old fellow, indeed, whispered a pretty broad word; but caught it up again when half said."
"Who was he?" asked the Master of Greylands.
"I'll be shot if I tell you. John Bent? No, that it was not: John Bent seems as prudent as the rest of them. Look here, James Castlemaine: if an impression exists against you, you must not blame people, but circumstances. Look at the facts. Young Anthony comes over to claim his property which you hold, believing it to be his. You tell him it is not his, that it is yours; but you simply tell him this; you do not, in spite of his earnest request, prove it to him. There's bad blood between you: at any rate, there is on your side; and you have an open encounter in a field, where you abuse him and try to strike him. That same night he and John Bent, being abroad together, see you cross the road from this Chapel Lane, that leads direct from your house, you know, and enter the Friar's Keep; young Anthony runs over in your wake, and enters it also: and from that blessed moment he is never seen by mortal eyes again. People outside hear a shot and a scream--and that's all. Look dispassionately at the circumstances for yourself, and see if they do not afford grounds for suspicion."
"If all the facts were true--yes. The most essential link in them is without foundation--that it was I who went into the Friar's Keep. Let me put a question to you--what object can you possibly suppose I should have in quitting my house at midnight to pay a visit to that ghostly place?"
"I don't know. It puzzles everybody."
"If John Bent is really correct in his assertions, that some one did cross from the lane to the Friar's Keep, I can only assume it to have been a stranger. No inhabitant of Greylands, as I believe and now assure you Squire Dobie, would voluntarily enter that place in the middle of the night. It has an ill reputation for superstition: all kinds of ghostly fancies attach to it. I should about as soon think of quitting my house at night to pay a visit to the moon as to the Friar's Keep."
Squire Dobie sat in thought. All this was more than plausible; difficult to discredit. He began to wonder whether he had not been hard upon James Castlemaine.
"What is your opinion upon the disappearance?" he asked. "You must have formed one."
Mr. Castlemaine lifted his dark eyebrows.