“Are you fishing, Jacob?”
“Me and the master, Miss. He’ll be back in a minute. He’n been whipping the stream up-ways.”
Her lip curled, ever so slightly. There might be better occupation than fishing for a man who cared.
“He’s thinking,” said Jake.
“Thinking!” she echoed scornfully.
“Yes’m. He says to me, he says, ‘Jacob, fishing helps a man to think; and what d’you suppose I’ve been thinking about, Jacob?’”
“Well?”
“‘Why, who it was as killed Annie Evans,’ he says.” The boy looked up shyly. “We knows anyhow as it weren’t Master Hugo, Miss.”
“Do you? Did he say that, Jacob?” She spoke softly, with a wonderful new glow about her heart.
“Yes’m,” said the boy. “He did that. You should ha’ heard him yesterday giving Squire Redwood the lie. We was hunting otter, Miss, and was on to his spraints, when Squire said something bad about Master Hugo as caught Sir Francis’s ear. He went up to him, he did, and he told him he’d lay his good ash-spear across his shoulders unless he withdrew the expression.”