"Yes, Sir Charles, but you see it was a pretty hard frost last
night, and I cannot find any marks at all. The ground must have
been like iron about the time when the ladder was placed there."

The gardener, on being called in, said that the ladder was always
hung up outside the shed at the back of the house; there was a chain
round it, and he had found that morning that one of the links had
been filed through.

"The Squire was most particular about its being locked, as Mr. Mark
knows, so that it could not be used by any ill disposed chaps who
might come along at night. The key of the padlock was always hung
on a nail round the other side of the shed. The Squire knew of it,
and so did Mr. Mark and me; so that while it was out of the way of
the eyes of a thief, any of us could run and get it and undo the
padlock in a minute in case of fire or anything of that sort. I
have not used the ladder, maybe, for a fortnight, but I know that
it was hanging in its place yesterday afternoon."

"I expect the fellow was prowling about here for some time," Mark
said. "I was chatting with my father in the library when I thought
I heard a noise, and I threw open the window, which had by some
carelessness been left a little open, and went out, and listened
for nearly an hour, but I could hear nothing, and put it down to
the fact that I was nervous owing to what had happened early in
the evening, and that the noise was simply fancy, or that the frost
had caused a dry branch of one of the shrubs to crack."

"How was it you did not notice the window was open as you went in?"