"Ay, that's right, quite," answered Captain Moreton; "but I say, Hal, how is the old cock, your father? I heard yesterday he was breaking sadly--got the jaundice, or some devil of a thing like that--as yellow as one of the guineas he keeps locked up from you--time for him to take a journey, I should think."
For a minute or two Harry Wittingham made no reply, but then he set his teeth hard and said,
"I should not wonder if the hard-hearted old flint were to leave it all away from me."
Captain Moreton gave a long, low whistle, exclaiming, "Upon my life, you must stop that. Hang me, if I would not pretend to be penitent and play a good boy for a month or two."
"It is no use in the world," answered Harry Wittingham; "you might as well try to turn the Thames at Gravesend as to put him out of his course when once he has taken a thing into head. He must do what he likes, he can't take it all, that's one comfort; but I say, Moreton, what the devil is that fellow Wolf hanging about here for? You had better not have any thing to do with him, I can tell you. He is as great a scamp as ever lived, and I'll punish him some day or another. I should have come in yesterday, but I saw him sitting down there upon the mound upon the heath, looking straight here, and so I went away."
"Did you see him again to-day?" asked Captain Moreton, with very uneasy feelings.
"Oh, yes," answered Wittingham, "there he was prowling about with his gun under his arm; but I doubled upon him this time, and went down the lanes, and in by the back way."
"I will make him pay for this," said Moreton, setting his teeth. "He has been spying here for a long time, and if it was not that I don't wish any fuss till the day after to-morrow is over, I would break every bone in his skin."
"It would be a good thing if you did," answered Harry Wittingham; "I'll tell you how he served me;" and he forthwith related all the circumstances of his somewhat unpleasant adventure with Stephen Gimlet when he visited the gamekeeper's cottage.
The moment he had done, Captain Moreton tapped him on the arm with a meaning smile, saying,