“Hullo, Smiley, old sport!” said Jim, holding out his hand; but he was wholly unprepared for the scene which followed.
Smiley’s knees seemed to give way under him, and, snatching at Jim’s hand, he stumbled and fell forward upon the grass at the roadside, panting, coughing, and laughing. “O God! O God! O God!” he gasped. “I knew you was alive, sir: I knew it in me bones.”
He pulled himself up on to his knees, and held Jim’s hand to his face, hugging it in a sort of frenzy of animal delight.
“Get up!” said Jim, sharply. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I dunno,” Smiley answered, sheepishly, clambering to his feet. “I felt sort o’ dizzy-dazzy like. I get took like that sometimes. I ’ad the doctor to me once: he told old Jenny it was my ticket home. That’s what ’e said it was: I heerd ’im say it to ’er.”
“Been ill, have you?” Jim asked, putting his hand on the poacher’s shoulder, and observing now how haggard the face had grown.
“I’ll be fit as a fiddle now you’ve come back,” he answered, laughing. “I knew you wasn’t dead! Murdered, they said you was; but I says to old Jenny: ‘I’ll not believe it,’ I says; ‘not with ’im able to floor I with one twist of his ’and. ’E’s just gone off tramping,’ I says. ’E’s gone back to the roads.... ’E never could abide a bedroom.’”
“Well, you were right, Smiley,” Jim replied. “I couldn’t stick it any longer, and so I quitted. But I mustn’t be seen, you understand. I’m dead. I’ve only come down here to get into touch with you, and find out how things are going on.”
“Friends stick to friends,” the poacher crooned, intoning the words like a chant. “I never ’ad no friend except you. It seems like I given you everything I got inside my ’ead.”