"From here the stolen sheep would go sometimes into Wales but more often into Shrewsbury or Birmingham... Just before you youngsters arrived we'd been suspicious that the thieves were working from somewhere round here, but it's wild and lonely country, and I spent some days in the district on my horrible old bicycle, but I never found Grey Walls until the same day that you did... I don't know whether you realize it but you've all been very helpful indeed. I'm sorry I had to mislead you all at first, but I was suspicious and afraid you might be a nuisance. Then if I'd given you a glimmering of the truth there was a risk - though I know now it wouldn't have been a risk - that you would let something out, and it would get back to Grey Walls that the elderly gent roaming the hills for flint arrowheads was not what he appeared.

"I'm afraid I blamed the gipsies for the same reason. I didn't want to talk about stolen sheep to anyone for a few days, but to find out more in my own way. It was more natural for elderly Mr Cantor to blame gipsies and I didn't want Denton and Clancy to start such a fuss that the thieves would close up activities here and move. I'd been told that I'd got to get hold of the ringleader at all costs, so I didn't want him to slip out of the noose - as Jenny would say, I think - before I was ready for the lot of them. After the twins and Mackie had found the hiding place in the dyke yesterday I got busy."

"I gave him the idea to get inside the gates," Dickie said. "We were inside the van with some marvellous policemen and when we stopped for a council of war up beyond the pine trees I had the idea... Mary or me did anyway... It was one of us... Or maybe we both had it at the same time..."

"What idea?" Tom shouted. "Do get on with it, Dickie."

"It was a good idea," Mary said quietly. "We thought of it... We told Mr Cantor to go out with a box of matches and burn everything up till they all came scuttlin' out like rats in a trap."

"What Mary says is right enough," said Mr Cantor. "We tried the fire idea and it worked far more quickly than I thought. The men I had with me went out and started about six fires and the wind did the rest. Not until they were well alight did we see the horsemen who were really racing the flames and not coming through them. That's so, isn't it, Denton?"