“Yes, but who told?”
“Him as fired his goon at him when he see’d him by the light o’ the fire poling along in his poont.”
“And who was that?”
“Nay, lad, I’m not going to tell thee. Some un as thowt he desarved a shot for setting fire to folks’s houses and shooting honest men. Some folk don’t stop to think. If they’ve got goons in their hands, and sees varmen running away, they oops wi’ the goon and shutes, and that’s what some un did. Thou’lt know who it weer one day.”
“And he told my father?”
“It weer our Jacob towd squire. He sin his faäce quite plain, and that it weer Dave.”
“Now, Marston, where for next?” shouted the squire, after taking a long look round over the open water, now illumined by the sun.
“Try that island yonder,” was the reply. “There’s a hut among the low fir-trees, and I fancy it is his making.”
The boats were turned in the suggested direction, and Dick felt a curious sensation of nervous dread stealing over him as he thought of seeing that hut not long before, and of how likely it was that Mr Marston was right.
A strange sense of shock and horror came over Dick as he now seemed to realise, for the first time, that he was one of a party engaged in hunting down Dave Gittan, the man who had always been to him as a friend, the companion of endless excursions over the mere; and his heart sank within him as he glanced round in search of an opportunity to land and get away from the horrible pursuit.