“Why, you didn’t take the soldiers to look at the cucumber-frames. Bound to say there’s one of them there spies lying snug under the leaves.”
“Ugh!” grunted the constable angrily; and he turned again and went on.
“I say, don’t be in such a hurry; there’s the sea-kale pots, too.”
“Ah, to be sure!” cried Waller, loud enough for the constable to hear. “Gusset must be right. Better come back and have another look. He may be in one of the sties disguised as a pig.”
Just then the road was leading them along by the bank of a fine old hammer pond, a great black-looking pool surrounded by a dense growth of alders and water-loving shrubs, while sedge, reed, and rush flourished wonderfully, and formed a mazy home for the abundant moorhens and coots.
As the party moved onward to the village there was a sudden rush and a splash, and Waller called upon the sergeant to stop.
“Here’s a likely place, sergeant,” he said.
“Nonsense!” said the man, “I know what that splash was. It was a big pike.”
“It might have been,” said the gardener, grinning, “but it’s more like the sort of splash a French spy would make when he saw soldiers’ scarlet jackets. Why don’t you make old Waxy dive in and have a hunt all round under the bushes?”
“No, don’t, sergeant,” put in Waller. “It’s ten feet deep in some places.”