There, on the grass behind him, not three feet from the track he had followed, was his own watch, with the chain still attached to it, lying half-hidden in the stubbly growth of the field.
For the first moment Clifford stared without speaking or moving, dumb with confusion, with astonishment.
“My watch! How did it get there?” he stammered at last.
The man laughed scornfully.
“Aye, how did it? I think I could give a good guess, if I dared.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, that this is the way Miss Nell Claris goes to see Miss Bostal at Shingle End, and that nobody but her ever uses it. That is what I should make so bold as to mean, if I could speak my mind. And I’ll wager Miss has been along here this morning. Oh, she don’t get round the swells for nothing, she don’t.”
Clifford sprang at the man and pinioned him by the throat.
“You lying cur!” he hissed out, savagely. “You deserve a thrashing for this!”
But even as he flung the fellow sprawling in the mud of the river-bank, Clifford felt a chill at his heart when he saw the evidence closing round pretty Nell.