“The Dowl looks arter his own,” answered Mr Sweetland. “’Twould have broke the neck of any honest chap, no doubt.”
They proceeded a mile into the sweet recesses of the woods. Then Minnie stood on the scene of the murder and regarded, not without emotion, the spot where her husband was declared to have killed Adam Thorpe.
His father gloomily pointed out the place where Daniel’s gun had been discovered by Titus Sim.
“It have aged the poor wretch twenty year,” he said. “Sim be a hang-dog creature now, an’ slinks past me as though he was to blame for Dan’s downfall. But I won’t have that. He only done his duty. There was the gun, an’ he had to show it. ’Tis all summed up in that. How did it come to be there, if my son was not? An’ why for did he run away or else kill himself, if he had the power to prove himself guiltless? Who can answer those questions?”
“’Tis for me to do it,” replied Minnie. “An’ right’s my side, father. If he was dead, ’tis for me to live to right his memory; but he be living, ’tis for me to clear him more than ever, so that he may come back an’ stand afore your face again like an honest man.”
“Never—never,” he answered. “That’s where us picked up Thorpe; an’ that’s where the gun was; an’ there, alongside that fallen tree in the brambles, was the spot where t’other blackguard got me down an’ nearly beat the life out of me.”
The girl looked round about her and nodded.
“Now you go about your business, for I lay this not a pleasant place to you,” she said. “I’ll just peep around, if you please.”
“There’s no eyes of all them that have searched here was so bright as yours, my dear; but think twice afore you waste your time here. ’Tis not likely you’ll find aught; an’ if you find anything more than others have found, ’tis most certain to be sorrow.”
“I don’t think it. My heart tells me as there be that hid here as will pay for finding. I’ve felt it all along, an’ never more than to-day.”