“Jem Stickels,” she answered with decision.
“And who is that? You know I am a stranger here.”
“A young fisherman who owes Nell a grudge because she would not listen to the fellow’s impudent advances. He is always hanging about the place, though, and he doesn’t scruple to threaten the girl to do her some harm, and he is always prattling to people who come this way about the robberies which have been committed at the Blue Lion.”
Clifford listened doubtfully. He remembered the young fisherman in the punt, with his unprepossessing manner and low type of face; and if it had been possible to connect him with the robbery, he would have jumped at the idea as a plausible one. But then the hand he had touched was certainly not that of Jem Stickels, and, moreover, he could not conceive how the young fisherman could have got into the house and out of it unless by collusion with some one within. Rather disappointed, therefore, with the lady’s fantastic idea, as it seemed to be, Clifford, upon finding that she had no better suggestion to make, soon took leave of her, begging her to impress upon Nell his own unwavering belief in her innocence.
In the hope that he might overtake Nell on her way home, or perhaps only with the lover’s wish to tread in the loved one’s footsteps, Clifford obtained Miss Bostal’s permission to go through the little gate at the bottom of her garden, so that he could return to the Blue Lion by the fields. Nell was out of sight, however, by the time he started, and whatever pleasure he extracted from the walk was due only to the knowledge that she had passed this way.
There was a faint track over the fields, not defined enough to be called a footpath, but just clear enough for him to discern by the trodden look of the short grass.
He was within a couple of hundred yards of the little river, and was looking out for any sign of Nell’s presence in the little kitchen garden on the other side, when he became aware that the questionable Jem Stickels was in sight, punting slowly down the stream, as he had done the day before. Catching sight of the gentleman, Jem drew his punt to the shore, and with his black felt hat on the back of his head, his short clay pipe in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, he landed, and slouched along toward Clifford.
“Well, sir, I warned you as how it were not a wise thing to put up at the Blue Lion,” said Jem, with a swaggering insolence which made Clifford want to kick him. “I ’eard of it up at Fleet yonder,” and he jerked his head back in the direction of the old ruined castle up the river. “I s’pose there’s been a grand pretense o’ huntin’ about the place, and how they’ve found nothin’. They’re gettin’ used to these little scenes by this time.”
After one glance at Clifford’s face, the man let his eyes wander elsewhere. Looking shiftily and idly about as he spoke, his attention was suddenly arrested, just as he finished his speech, by something on the ground, apparently a few feet from where Clifford was standing. The latter noticed the rapid change which came over the man’s face, the eager look of interest and astonishment with which he stood gazing open-mouthed at the one particular spot on the ground.
In spite of himself, Clifford turned his head and looked, too.