“I dunno. Very likely. Never heard her say nothing.”
Bob Smallpiece walked on with no more reply than a grunt. Soon a light from the Dun Cow twinkled through the bordering coppice, and in a few paces they were up at the wood’s edge.
“No light along the road,” the keeper said, glancing to left and right, and making across the hard gravel.
“There’s somebody,” Johnny exclaimed, pointing up the pale road.
“Drunk,” objected the other. And truly the indistinct figure staggered and floundered. “An’ goin’ the wrong way. Chap just out o’ the Dun Cow. Come on.”
But Johnny’s gaze did not shift. “It’s gran’dad!” he cried suddenly, and started running.
Bob Smallpiece sprang after him, and in twenty paces they were running abreast. As they neared the old man they could hear him talking rapidly, in a monotonous, high-pitched voice; he was hatless, and though they called he took no heed, but stumbled on as one seeing and hearing nothing; till, as the keeper reached to seize his arm, he trod in a gulley and fell forward.
The shock interrupted his talk, and he breathed heavily, staring still before him, as he regained his uncertain foothold, and reeled a step farther. Then Bob Smallpiece grasped him above the elbow, and shouted his name.
“What’s the matter, gran’dad?” Johnny demanded. “Ill?”
The old man glared fixedly, and made as though to resume his course.