Deep Moat Grange

"No, Mr. Alderson, that is just it, you do not see," said my father. "There is this whip handle cut through six inches from the holder; what do you make of that?"

"Well," said the vicar, looking for arguments in defence of his parochial quiet, "there is the lash. There has been an accident, you see. Perhaps poor Harry went suddenly out of his mind. There is insanity in the family. He may have cut himself. That would account for the--the substance of a fluid nature resembling blood, and also for the lash cut from the butt of the whip!"

My father took the stained thong in his fingers. It was curiously braided, plait laid over plait, rather flat than round, and exceedingly neat.

"This is not the lash of Harry Foster's whip," he said. "I ought to know, because I sold him the whip. This is a worked lash, and if I mistake not I know the fingers that wrought that pattern."