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Updated: July 1, 2025
Had we perhaps left a footmark or failed to burn a note, was the second footman who was detailed as my valet even now pausing astonished in the brushing of my clothes with our crumpled secret in his hand? Between myself and the clear vision of this world about me this infernal net-work of precautions spread like a veil. And it was not only a matter of concealments but of positive deceptions.
It exhaled no fogs, and was never dull even on a November day, when the clay-lands five miles away breathed a vapour which lay blue and heavy on the furrows, and the miry paths, retaining in their sullenness for weeks the impress of every footmark, almost pulled the boots off the feet as you walked along them.
A broken toy would have been as great an offence in that treasured spot as a stray cat; a little footmark on the verbena bed, a kicked-up stone on the gravel walk, were punishable offences. No room for us two children there.
Anyone who had the design to alarm these people would be compelled to place his very face against the glass before he could be seen. There is a three-foot flower-border outside this window, but no indication of a footmark.
At length I came upon a dusty road presenting numerous impressions of the shoes of men and horses; and after having been so long accustomed to view even a solitary, naked footmark with interest, the sight of a road marked with shoes, and the associations these traces revived, were worth all the toil of the journey.
Mr. Downing's brain was now working with a rapidity and clearness which a professional sleuth might have envied. Paint. Red paint. Obviously the same paint with which Sammy had been decorated. A footmark. Whose footmark? Plainly that of the criminal who had done the deed of decoration. Yoicks! There were two things, however, to be considered. Your careful detective must consider everything.
"Here is the right foot, plain enough," he said, carefully fitting the shoe he had brought in the mark. "He alighted on that as he came over the gate. Half over it is another footmark Bowmore's, I expect, for I can see signs of others, in both directions going and coming. But we shall know better presently." He rose, and we followed the irregular track across the meadow.
Having said this, he asked me for the paper pattern of the footprint which he had given me to take care of, and applied it to a very clear footmark behind the thicket. "Aha!" he said, rising.
On the right and left rose huge rocks, devoid of lichen or moss, and in the lava-like earth chasms yawned. Here and there he saw a sheen of white bones. Now too the path began to grow less and less marked; then it became a mere trace, with a footmark here and there; then it ceased altogether.
There can be no doubt that the footmark indicates the spot to have been at one time the scene of the inauguration of the kings or chiefs of the region; and the basin was in all probability one of those primitive mortars which were in use for grinding corn long before the invention of the quern. Dun Add is one of the oldest sites in Scotland.
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