“Theer, now, I’ll let you go,” said Hickathrift, “and I’m straänge and glad I was i’ time to stop you. Think o’ you two mates falling out and fighting like a couple o’ dogs! Why, I should as soon hev expected to see me and my missus fight. Mester Dick, I’m ’bout ’shamed o’ yow.”
“I’m ashamed of myself, Hicky, and I feel as if I was never going to be happy again,” cried Dick.
“Nay, nay, lad, don’t talk like that,” said the big wheelwright. “Why, doctor says he’s sewer that he can bring squire reight again, and what more do you want?”
“To see the man punished who shot him, Hicky,” cried Dick passionately.
“Ay, I’d like to see that, or hev the punishing of him,” said Hickathrift, stretching out a great fist. “It’s one o’ they big shacks (idle scoundrels, from Irish shaughraun) yonder up at the dree-ern. I’m going to find him out yet, and when I do— Theer, go and wesh thy faäce.”
Dick was going sadly away when a word from Hickathrift arrested him; and turning, it was to see that the big fellow was looking at him reproachfully, and holding out a hand for him to grasp.
“Ay, that’s better, lad,” said the wheelwright smiling. “Good-bye, lad, and don’t feight again!”
The result of this encounter was that Dick found himself without a companion, and he went day by day bitterly about thinking how hard it was that he should be suspected and ill-treated for trying to spare Tom the agony of having his father denounced and dragged off to jail.
Constables came and made investigations in the loose way of the time; but they discovered nothing, and after a while they departed to do duty elsewhere; but only to come back at the end of a week to re-investigate the state of affairs, for a large low building occupied by about twenty of the drainers was, one windy night, set on fire, and its drowsy occupants had a narrow escape from death.
But there was no discovery made, the constables setting it down to accident, saying that the men must have been smoking; and once more the fen was left to its own resources.