‘There was a man with you, my lady,’ he went on, ‘as you drove through Cruhan, and we want to know where he is now.’
‘That concerns you, sir, and not me.’
‘Maybe it does, my lady,’ said he, with a grin; ‘but I suppose you know who you were travelling with?’
‘You evidently don’t remember, sir, whom you are talking to.’
‘The law is the law, miss, and there’s none of us above it,’ said he, half defiantly; ‘and when there’s some hundred pounds on a man’s head, there’s few of us such fools as to let him slip through our fingers.’
‘I don’t understand you, sir, nor do I care to do so.’
‘The sergeant there has a warrant against him,’ said he, in a whisper he intended to be confidential; ‘and it’s not to do anything that your ladyship would think rude that I came up myself. There’s how it is now,’ muttered he, still lower. ‘They want to search the luggage, and examine the baskets there, and maybe, if you don’t object, they’d look through the carriage.’
‘And if I should object to this insult?’ broke she in.
‘Faix, I believe,’ said he, laughing, ‘they’d do it all the same. Eight hundred—I think it’s eight—isn’t to be made any day of the year!’
‘My uncle is a justice of the peace, Mr. Gill; and you know if he will suffer such an outrage to go unpunished.’