"Snug behind the hedge in front of which you planted yourself," he answered. "And if you want to know what I was doing there, I'll tell you. I was doing—or had been doing—a bit of poaching. And, as I say, what you saw, I saw!"
"Then I'll ask you a question, Mr. Crone," I said. "Why haven't you told, yourself?"
"Aye!" he said. "You may well ask me that. But I wasn't called as a witness at yon inquest."
"You could have come forward," I suggested.
"I didn't choose," he retorted.
We both looked at each other again, and while we looked he swigged off his drink and helped himself, just as generously, to more. And, as I was getting bolder by that time, I set to work at questioning him.
"You'll be attaching some importance to what you saw?" said I.
"Well," he replied slowly, "it's not a pleasant thing—for a man's safety—to be as near as what he was to a place where another man's just been done to his death."
"You and I were near enough, anyway," I remarked.
"We know what we were there for," he flung back at me. "We don't know what he was there for."