"Another hat!" Bevill exclaimed, taking it from the old man's hands and turning it over in his own. "Another! Whose this time?"
To whomsoever it might have belonged, it did not, however, appear to the young man that it was any more likely to have belonged to Francbois than had done the earlier discovered one. If anything, it was an even poorer specimen of headgear than that had been, and was a hat that, though originally not of a common order, gave signs that it might in its existence have passed from one owner to another; from, indeed, a well-to-do man down to one who would be willing to accept it in its final state of usefulness.
"It is very strange," he said, half aloud and half to himself. "Were there three of them here last night, or were there only two, and was Francbois not one of them? Had I two enemies besides him, and still have two with him since Sparmann is gone? It is vastly strange." After which he turned to Karl, and said:
"You have just found this thing. Therefore it was not there last night nor yesterday morning?"
"Ah," the old man replied, "I cannot tell. Yesterday I used not the path at all, having gone first to the Jouffrouw at Mynheer Van Ryk's in the morning; and, last night, I was busy with _him_," nodding his head towards where the corpse by the stables had been, "after dark."
"He is gone," Karl said vaguely. "Gone. No matter where. He will not come back to--to--the Weiss Haus or Liége."
By which remark Bevill was led to suppose that the old man had cast Sparmann's body into the river.
"Therefore," the latter said, "we have no knowledge of whether that hat was left behind by one who was here during the storm of the night before, or last night. Yet," turning the thing over in his hands, "surely it must have been the first night. See, it has recently been soaked by rain, the lining is still damp, and last night there was no rain whatever."
"It may be," Karl replied, apparently much astonished at this clear reasoning. "It may be. Therefore, you had three visitors on that night."
"I cannot say. I have but proof of two. The wearers of the two hats at least were here. Yet they may well have been the only visitors; in solemn truth there may not have been three. Though strange it is that, if there were but two, both should have parted with their hats. One must have lost his in the encounter in which he received his death-wound, the other in fleeing away."