"And Jim Burdon?"
"Near abouts, too. Be you goin' to tell on me?"
"Why on earth shouldn't I? It's robbery, you know, and I don't care any more than my father does for being robbed."
"That was a nasty tumble of yours, sir."
"Yes, I suppose it was something of a spill. But I'm not hurt, thank you."
"It might ha' been a sight worse," said Charley Hannaford reflectively. "A foot or two more, now—and the rock, if I remember, sloping outwards just here below." He leaned his head sideways and seemed to drop a casual glance over the ledge.
Walter knew that the drop just there was a very nasty one indeed. "Oh, but yon's where I came over—I couldn't have fallen quite so wide—" he began to explain, and checked himself, reading the queer strained smile on Hannaford's face.
"I—I reckon we'll call it Providence, all the same," said the poacher.
Then Walter understood. The man was desperate, and he—he, Walter à Cleeve, was a coward.
Had he known it, across the gully a pair of eyes were watching. He had help within call. Jim Burdon had come to the upper end of the plantation a few seconds too late to witness the accident. By the time he reached the hedge there and peered over, Walter had disappeared; and Jim— considerably puzzled, half inclined to believe that the stranger had walked over the edge of the White Rock and broken his neck—worked his way down the lateral fence beside the gully, to be brought up standing by the sight of the man he sought, safe and sound, and apparently engaged in friendly chat with Charley Hannaford.