Shanks did not reply. Seizing the top of the gate, he jumped over and vanished in the wood. For a few moments all was quiet, and then Mordaunt heard steps in the road. He left the gate and when he had gone a few yards met Dick Halliday, who stopped and looked at him with surprise.
"I thought I saw two people," Dick remarked.
"You did see two," Mordaunt agreed. "It's curious the other fellow didn't hear you farther off, because I imagine his ears are very good. Were you trying to get near us?"
"Not at first. They're mending the road up the hill and I walked on the grass. When I saw you at the gate I suspected poachers and came on quietly. Who was the other fellow?"
"Tom Shanks. I caught him coming out of the wood with some pheasants and warned him he'd have to leave Bank-end if Jim knew."
"Do you mean you promised not to tell Jim?"
"I imagined he understood something like that. He is a powerful fellow, and carried a heavy stick. Still, my satisfying him doesn't bind you."
"I don't know; perhaps it does bind me, in a way," Dick replied. "All the same, Shanks is a loafing thief; I'd have turned him out of the neighborhood."
Mordaunt hesitated. He would have liked Dick to tell Jim, since this might lead the latter to take the cottage from Shanks. For all that, he did not see how he could persuade Dick to do so, because he did not want him to think he had an object.
"Well, I must get on," he said. "Bernard grumbles when I'm late for dinner."