I therefore make the inference, and
pass on.
'Let us then see if we can by searching find out any absolutely certain
deviation from right on the part of Randolph, in which we may be quite
sure that his father was not an abettor. At eight on the night of the
murder it is dark; there has been some snow, but the fall has
ceased--how long before I know not, but so long that the interval
becomes sufficiently appreciable to cause remark. Now the party going
round the house come on two tracks of feet meeting at an angle. Of one
track we are merely told that it was made by the small foot of a woman,
and of it we know no more; of the other we learn that the feet were big
and the boots clumsy, and, it is added, the marks were _half
obliterated by the snow_. Two things then are clear: that the persons
who made them came from different directions, and probably made them at
different times. That, alone, by the way, may be a sufficient answer to
your question as to whether Cibras was in collusion with the
"burglars." But how does Randolph behave with reference to these
tracks? Though he carries the lantern, he fails to perceive the
first--the woman's--the discovery of which is made by a lad; but the
second, half hidden in the snow, he notices readily enough, and at once
points it out.
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