Ten sounded across the valley from Marshcotes parish church, and the occupants of the bar slouched out one by one; each, as he reached the passage, turned his eyes towards the kitchen.
"What's his business, think ye?" murmured Dick the cobbler.
The landlord, with his hand on the street door, grinned pleasantly. "Tha'rt a sight too curious, Dicky. Maybe he's some sort of a land-agent—Squire Daneholme's, happen. I remember, now I come to think, tha wert boasting a neet or two back about a matter of a hare—tha'd best be keeping a quiet tongue in thy heäd, Dick the Cobbler."
"Begow!" said Dick, laying an arm on his host's sleeve. "Dost 'a think that?"
"Out ye get, the lot of ye! Do ye think I want Constable Lee i' my public, an' th' magistrates on Friday?" cried Boniface, not heeding Dick's frightened appeal.
"Constable Lee knows which side on his mug th' beer is, and I'm thinking he'll noan be hard on ye," put in one of the departing crowd.
The landlord joined in the laugh that followed, and locked his door for the night. "He's a bit of a softy, is Cobbler Dick," he observed. "They're a sight too thin-skinned, this younger breed o' poachers. Well, well, I'd like to know, myseln, what the gent's business might be."
The landlord felt that he had a right to be the first recipient of any news whatsoever; for was he not named Jack o' Ling Crag, and had he not the reputation of being able to see further into the heart of a haystack than any man in the parish? They are much given, these dwellers on the uplands, to naming a man after the house or cottage in which he lives; and since the Dog and Grouse was in a sense—the most cheerful possible sense—the representative building of the village, Jack was accredited with the proudest surname a man could have up there.
And before another hour had passed, Jack did become partially enlightened as to the stranger's object in coming to Ling Crag. His visitor asked him to join him in a pipe, and he sat down on the other side of the hearth. They talked of indifferent topics for awhile—the crops, the grouse shooting, the fishing in Scartop Water—until the stranger turned abruptly in his seat.