"If he's there," said Dickie, "don't you think you ought to go, just on the chance of him being there and wanting you?"
"If you come to oughts," said Beale, "I oughter gone 'ome any time this twenty year. Only I ain't. See?"
"Well," said Dickie, "it's your lookout. I know what I should do if it was me."
Remembrance showed him the father who had leaned on his shoulder as they walked about the winding walks of the pleasant garden in old Deptford—the father who had given him the little horse, and insisted that his twenty gold pieces should be spent as he chose.
"I dunno," said Beale. "What you think? Eh, matey?"
"I think let's," said Dickie. "I lay if he's alive it 'ud be as good as three Sundays in the week to him to see you. You was his little boy once, wasn't you?"
"Ay," said Beale; "he was wagoner's mate to one of Lord Arden's men. 'E used to ride me on the big cart-horses. 'E was a fine set-up chap."
To hear the name of Arden on Beale's lips gave Dickie a very odd, half-pleasant, half-frightened feeling. It seemed to bring certain things very near.
"Let's," he said again.
"All right," said Beale, "only if it all goes wrong it ain't my fault—an' there used to be a foot-path a bit further on. You cut through the copse and cater across the eleven-acre medder, and bear along to the left by the hedge an' it brings you out under Arden Knoll, where my old man's place is."