"And there the pair used to spend hours of their time. When Master Derrick was a wee chap, 'twas always Hooker he followed; home from boarding-school, the same; he didn't forget old friends, and on they'd go with their inventions as they called them. Home from college, 'time Hooker had the cottage—then there they'd be down at the keeper's house, this house, here, my dears, and—that's how the bad end came!"
"What!" whispered Jan with white lips.
"Strange things were being said," went on the old woman, "and at that time strange false money was being passed in the county. Coiners were somewhere, and the evil couldn't be traced. Then scandal began to be afloat, though we heard naught of it till after; 'twas started, some said, by Mitchell, head keeper he'd been, and dismissed when Hooker took the job, and a grudge he'd always borne the lad. Folk spoke of the dear lads' inventions, and—well, my dears, to cut a long story short, the police from headquarters came down unexpected on this very cottage one night. Found what they called, I mind me, 'coiners' plant' in the wee room where Miss Jan sleeps, and in the attic-room above, where to this day I'm feared to heart of stopping long, 'twas there that they arrested the two."
"Oh!" Peter's face went quite white. "Uncle Derrick! Was it?"
"No!" the old woman's voice was firm, "neither of the dear lads was in it. Some spoke of Master Derrick's debts, and, well, some he may have had, open-handed as he was; but we know, as had served Squire from youth, and watched Master Derrick grow up. It was imprisonment that they got—seven years."
"Where are they now? It's fifteen years ago," Robin's voice sounded strange, even to himself.
"Ah, my dears," Brownie dropped a slow, difficult tear, "that's the saddest part of it all."
CHAPTER X
"Never a trace of them has there been since they were released from prison, never a trace. Out of the country they both went, so we think, and that's as far as we know. It was the death-blow to Squire, it was; but he died trusting in Master Derrick. Left him all his money too, did Squire; 'as a proof,' so Squire said. Yes, the Chase went to your father, the Major, Master Robin, him being eldest son, my dear, but the money's waiting for Master Derrick when he comes home."