The wood thereabouts was carpeted--thickly carpeted--with pine needles; they lay several inches thick beneath the trunks of the trees; they stretched right up to the edge of the rock.

And now, as Garthwaite turned the lantern, they saw that on this soft carpet there was a great slur--the murderer had evidently dragged his victim some yards across the pine needles before depositing him behind the rock.

And at the end of this mark there were plain traces of a struggle--the soft, easily yielding stuff was disturbed, kicked about, upheaved, but as Brereton at once recognized, it was impossible to trace footprints in it.
"That's where it must have been," said Garthwaite.

"You see there's a bit of a path there.

The old man must have been walking along that path, and whoever did it must have sprung out on him there--where all those marks are--and when he'd strangled him dragged him here.