cabin in the distance. A few yards on the nearer side stood the
cottage, which they now saw was empty and dilapidated.

"I say, Hilliard, look there!" cried Merriman suddenly.

They had passed along the lane until the facade of the building
had come into view and they were able to read its signboard:
"Ackroyd & Bolt, Licensed Rectifiers."

"I thought it looked like a distillery," continued Merriman in
considerable excitement. "By Jove! Hilliard, that's a find and
no mistake! Pretty suggestive, that, isn't it?"

Hilliard was not so enthusiastic.

"I'm not so sure," he said slowly. "You mean that it supports my
brandy smuggling theory? Just how?"

"Well, what do you think yourself? We suspect brandy smuggling,
and here we find at the import end of the concern the nearest
building in an isolated region is a distillery - a rectifying house,
mind you! Isn't that a matter of design too? How better could
they dispose of their stuff than by dumping it on to rectifiers?"

"You distinguish between distillers and rectifiers?"

"Certainly; there's less check on rectifiers. Am I not right in
saying that while the regulations for the measurement of spirit
actually produced from the stills are so thorough as to make fraud
almost impossible, rectifiers, because they don't themselves produce