“Noa, squire; leastways it didn’t ought to be. But as them as have no right to ’t have got t’ Hall Farm instead o’ them that was born and bred there, it’s summat to welcome ye back to t’ village that’s proud to have you belonging to it.”
“Proud! Why proud?” asked Mitchell, bluntly. “If the village has got to be proud of me, I ought to be ashamed of it, I should think. And who can have a greater right to the farm than the man who’s paying the rent of it.”
The old postman was not abashed. Each snub administered to him did but increase, in his eyes, the importance of the administrator. He felt, too, that the opportunity he gave the colonist of sharpening his wit upon him was inclining that gentleman to look upon him with favor.
“Very true, squire. You that travel get a different way o’ looking at things from what us stay-at-home folk do. All t’ same, squire, I hope as I may be allowed to give you a bit of a hint that may, or it may not”—and the old man nodded with mystery and importance—“be of use to you on your business here.”
“My business here! And what’s that?” asked Mitchell, abruptly.
“Well they do say as how it were on account of summat as happened ten years ago that were never cleared up.”
“Oh?”
“And if so be as that’s true, which I don’t say—neither do I say otherwise, as it aren’t true, why then what I say is,” went on the old man, whose style grew more involved the nearer he came to the point, “that Martha Lowndes, as were her foster-sister, and them two always as thick as thieves, which that is a party as knows more’n she tells.”
Ned Mitchell, who had been taking nuts from his pocket, opening them with a penknife, and devouring them ravenously, shut up his knife and laid his hand on his garden gate without the smallest sign of interest in the information he had received.
“Is that all?” he asked, feeling his pockets to make sure that not one nut still lurked in the corners.