"Damme, yes; and, what's more, I'll take odds that I'm not the rector of this very parish."
By this time, as you will guess, I had no doubt of his madness. To begin with, anyone less like a parson it would be hard to pick in a crowd, and, besides, I remembered some of his language to the highwaymen.
"It ought to be hereabouts," he went on meditatively. "And if it should turn out to be my parish we must make an effort to get your money back, if only for our credit's sake, hey?"
"Oh," said I, suspicious all of a sudden, "if these ruffians are your parishioners and you know them—"
"Know them?" he caught me up. "How the devil should I know them? I've never been within a hundred miles of this country in my life."
"You say 'tis your parish—"
"I don't. I only say that it may be."
"But, excuse me, if you've never seen it before—"
"I don't see it now," he snapped.
"Then excuse me again, but how on earth do you propose—here in the dead of night, on an outlandish moorland, in a country you have never seen—to discover a chest of treasure which seven or eight scoundrelly, able-bodied natives are at this moment making off with and hiding?"