I think the Detective-Inspector felt very pleased with my view; and there was another good point for me, because, afore they buried him, they took the dead man's fingerprints and found he'd been in prison before. In fact he was a bad 'un—a juvenile adult that had served two years for three burglaries; and so Owlet had told me a bit of truth mixed up with his lies. But of course poor Bond might have meant to run straight after he fell in love with Jenny, till Owlet tackled him and encouraged him to try and murder me. Nobody will ever know what his game at Oakshotts was, for he died before he'd played it. Anyway, he was gone, and all that mattered to me remained to get my neck out of the noose if it could be done.
And it was done, though more by the act of God than any particular cleverness of man. But, primed with what I'd told him, Mr. Bates got up Owlet's sleeve and, little by little, wormed out the truth. And Owlet, who'd been on the razor edge over the job for a good bit with a mind tottering, lost his nerve at last and gave himself away. He'd got in some queer fashion to believe Bates was his friend and on his side, for these deep detective chaps have a way often to show friendship to them they most suspect; and so it happened; for Joshua let it out at last, finding the other knew very near as much about it as he did. And then the darbies were on him, and soon after they were off me.
He'd done it with a madman's cleverness, to free his girl and get her back; and he went to a criminal lunatic asylum for his bit of work and bides there yet. And as for Jenny, I left the rest to her and didn't lift a finger to draw her to me no more. She came, however, and felt the Lord had saved not only me alive, but her also.
For three year we worked at Oakshotts after that, as man and wife; and then I took my pension and went into Little Silver to live. Because Sir Walter got it into his head to marry again before it was too late, and his new lady never liked me so well as he did. He'd applauded me far too much to her, and 'tis always a fatal fact in human nature, that if you hear a fellow-creature praised up to the sky, your mind takes an instant set against 'em.
No. XV
THE NIGHT-HAWK
I
There's no doubt that a man's opinions change with his business, because the point of view's just everything. What be good to you is what you want to happen and think ought to happen; and if it don't happen, then you'm a bit fretful about it, and reckon there's a screw loose somewhere in the order of things. For instance, I be a gamekeeper to-day, and I take a view of fish and birds according; but once on a time I was a fly-by-night young rip of a poacher, and had a very different idea about feathers and fins.
"A fish be no more the bank-owner's fish than the water in the river be his water!" That's what I used to say. Because a salmon—he's a sea-fish, and free as air and his own master. Same with a bird. How do I know whether 'twas Squire Tom, or Squire Dick, or Squire Harry as reared a pheasant I happen to knock over on a moony night? Birds will fly, as Nature meant 'em; and, again, it may be just a wild bird, as never came out of no boughten egg at all, but belonged to the country, like his father and his grandfather afore him. And so 'tis common property, same as the land did ought to be, and if I be clever enough to catch 'un and kill 'un—why, so much the better for me! All for free trade you see I was. And in a poacher that must be the point of view. But time and chance play all manner of funny pranks with a man; and time and chance it were that turned me from this dangerous walk of life into what I be now. The way of it was simple enough, in a manner of speaking, yet I'm sure no such thing happened afore, or be like to hap again.
Woodcotes was a very great estate on the brink o' Dartmoor. In fact, the covers crept up the hills as far as the fierce winds would let 'em; and they was cold woods up over—cold and rocky and better liked by the foxes than the pheasants. But the birds done very well half a mile lower down, and the river that run through Woodcotes carried a lot of salmon at the proper time. A ten-pound fish was no wonder, and more'n one twenty-pounder have left it in my memory.
I was twenty-five on the night this tale begins—twenty-five year old, and a proper night-hawk of a chap, as loved the hours of darkness and gloried in the shedding of blood. Sport was in my veins, so to say, handed down from father to son, for my grandfather had been a gamekeeper, and my father a water-bailiff, and my uncle—my father's brother—a huntsman. That was the line of life I'd thirsted for, or even to go for a jockey. But Nature weren't of the same mind. I growed six foot tall afore I was seventeen—my mother's family was all whackers—and so riding was out of the question, and I went on the land and worked behind the horses instead of on 'em.