“Oh, that’s just child’s chatter, Sir Clinton. I oughtn’t to have mentioned it.”
“I’m quite willing to listen to ‘child’s chatter,’ Mold, if it happens to be unusual.”
Mold evidently decided to take the plunge, though obviously he regretted having mentioned the matter at all.
“This Jennie Hitchin’s a child that lives with her grandmother on the estate. The girl’s there at night in case anything goes wrong with the old woman. Old Mrs. Hitchin was taken ill one night lately, about the middle of the night. Pretty bad she seemed; and Jennie had to dress and go off for the doctor in a hurry. That took her through the woods—it’s a short cut that way and the moonlight was bright. An’ as she was goin’ along . . .”
“What night was this,” Sir Clinton interrupted.
The keeper thought for a moment or two.
“Now I come to think of it,” he said, “ ’t was the night of that robbery up at Ravensthorpe. So it was. An’ as Jennie was goin’ along through the woods she saw—so she says—a Black Man slippin’ about from tree to tree.”
“A man in dark clothes?”
“No, sir. If I understood rightly, ’t was a black man. I mean a naked man with a black skin, black all over.”
“Did he molest the child?”