“No, I don’t. Do you?” inquired Peace, who was by this time a litle less confident in his tone and manner.
“Yes, I do. A man named Gregson was shot by a woman, and afterwards expiated his crimes on the public scaffold. If I mistake not, I met you on the night of the burglary. I’ve an astonishing power of remembering faces.”
“Have you? You’re a mighty clever fellow in your way; but it so happens that I never heard of any such burglary, and don’t know any house bearing that name. You seem to know more about it than I do. Were you one of the burglars?”
At this last observation the young man rushed forward and was about to strike Peace, when the girl, Nelly, threw herself between the two, and begged her protector to spare him.
“Say no more, Nell,” returned the young man. “I won’t harm him. Though for the life of me I can’t understand why you should seek to protect him.”
“Go your ways, you ugly little vagabond,” said the stranger, addressing Peace. “If you remain here much longer the chances are you will find yourself handed over to the police constable, who is coming this way.”
Peace in this instance considered discretion to be the better part of valour, and, hurling several anathemas at the girl and her protector, he made off.
He hastened at once to the house of the village surgeon, where he had his head dressed, declaring that he had received the wound in conflict with what he chose to term a ruffian.
He was by this time thoroughly sick of Broxbridge, which he determined upon leaving forthwith. He had been jilted and derided by a girl to whom he had become attached, had been chastised by a young man, who evidently knew all about the Oakfield House burglary, which he had believed had been quite forgotten, and so there was every reason for his leaving the neighbourhood. On the following morning he packed up his traps, had them conveyed to the station, and bidding Brickett good-bye, with a promise to return in a few weeks’ time, he beat a retreat, and hastened up to the metropolis, to find therein a new scene of action.