Jack o' Ling Crag gurgled complacently.
"Nay, now, Mr. Lummax, is it likely 'at they'd nobble an owd bird like me wi' gamekeeper chaff? It's all right, I says, an' none 'ud deny it, that chaps like Dick the Cobbler should be cotched: they're green hands meeting green hands—for all th' owd lot o' keepers, an' a smart set they war, is gone—an' it's a toss up whether it ends in th' coort-house for Dicky an' his mates, or i' broken heäds for th' keepers. But me—Lord, sir, I thowt ye knew me better nor to go thinking owt o' that sort!"
"Still," said Griff, with a slow, retrospective smile, "still, we ran it pretty close that night in Birch Wood. Do you remember? By Jove, but it was sport!"
"I remember varry weel, Mr. Lummax; for that war th' first time I felt sartin sure ye'd getten a heädpiece on your shoulders—ay, lad, your father's heädpiece. It do seem queer," he added, meditatively, "that even th' gentry up hereabouts is allus itching for a bit o' poaching. There war old Tom Hirst, now; he war a regular nipper afore religion stuck in his gizzard an' choked th' life out on him. Mony's the time—— But it gets chilly, like, standing i' th' road. What say ye to a glass o' th' blend 'at a two or three on us knows about?"
"I say that nothing would suit me better, if our friend Lee has not grown wide-awake since I used to know him."
"I've a great respect for Constable Lee, sir," observed Jack, gravely, as he led the way indoors, "an' Constable Lee hes an ekal respect for Jack o' Ling Crag. We've niver hed a wrang word sin' a little scrape 'at it took me all my time to get him clear of: he's a man what bears gratitude, an' ye may tak my word for that."
"And, in any case, I'm coming in as your guest. Bless me, it's odd if a respectable innkeeper can't entertain a friend to a glass of whisky."
"That's so, sir; an' proud to be named your friend."
"About this matter that has been keeping you out of your bed?" said Griff presently, holding his glass to the light and looking through it with the eye of a man on whom good drink is not wasted.
"Oh, that? It's nowt so varry special, when all's said; only it's not ivery day 'at a gent comes to Ling Crag a-house-hunting—nor ivery twelvemonth that he leaves a ten-pun note behind him."