“Dammy, dammy, bless you for remembering,” the man said. “Now, but Master Highworth, I don’t want to presume; but I’ve been all these years, seven years now, in this unchristian land, and I never see a word of anyone come from the old part. Anyhow I’ll see to thy baggage, Master Ridden. Now you want to go to a good hotel. The Santiago is the one for you. I’ll see you to there, Master Highworth, and I’ll look after you, and don’t you turn from me, Master Highworth, for anyone would have killed Keeper Jackson, the way he spoke.
“I was out on a moony night, and I’ll tell ’ee just where I were. I were up there by the valley, where the water comes out; and it wasn’t murder really. I’d gone out with my old pin-fire. It was a lovely moony night, and I got a hare. Well then, a hare’s a rebel, ain’t he, and game? So I got a hare and put ’un in my pocket and I was going on away along up, when I see another hare. He was on a bank just above the road. So ‘I’ll have ’ee, my master,’ I says, and I up after him and I give him my pin-fire and he went over the bank, and I went over the bank; and he wasn’t a hare, not really, he was a fox. I see him when I got up the bank. And there was Keeper Jackson and he says, ‘I’ve got you, my man,’ he says, ‘you best come quiet.’ And I says, ‘That wasn’t a hare,’ I says, ‘that was a fox, and a fox is a rebel and he isn’t game.’ And he says, ‘You come quiet. I’ve had my eye on you a long time,’ he says, and he lets fly at me with his gun. And one of the pellets went through my gaiters, and so I give him pin-fire. And when I see I killed him, I go along up the downs and there I come upon a man driving sheep. I put old pin-fire in a ditch and cover him over. I goes along with the man driving the sheep, until we come to Salisbury. But I’ll tell you all about that. We’ll go along to the Santiago.”
Hi remembered the man very well now as a poacher, who did odd jobs for Squire Bill in the dog-breaking and ferret business. It was perfectly true that he had murdered Keeper Jackson and had been searched and advertised for as a murderer, but had escaped.
Hi had been only ten at the time; but the thing had made a stir in that quiet place.
By this time Ezekiel had hailed a carriage, partly by signs and partly by noises, which the signs explained. For a moment he showed Hi plainly that he meant to run after the carriage until it reached the hotel, but this Hi would not allow. He made him sit with him inside.
“You’re the first ever I’ve seen from anywhere near those parts, Mr. Highworth,” Ezekiel said. “You see, after I got to Salisbury, they read in a paper how the body was found and it was me, so I thought I’d best not stay there, so I out of the pub, and, as I come out of the pub, there come up thirteen policemen and they were looking for me. And they walked straight by me and never took me. So I thought the best thing I could do is to follow these men now they’ve passed me, so I followed them along a bit, and then they separated, and I thought, ‘This won’t do,’ so I went along the road a bit and there was a man driving some cows, so I said to him, ‘I’m going along the road a bit. Shall I help thee drive?’ So I drive them along a bit, and he said to me, ‘Where are you going?’ And I thought, ‘Well, it won’t do to tell anybody where I’m going,’ so I said, ‘I’ll just turn back and go into the town now.’ And so I turned back, because I thought, ‘Well, he’ll notice me,’ and he must have been suspicious or he wouldn’t have asked where I was going to. And I thought, ‘Now, I’ll diddle him like I diddled the policemen. I’ll go right across this town and out the other side. No one would think of looking for me there.’
“Well, I went across and, as I was going across, I passed like an inn yard, and just at that inn yard door, like a gateway, there was Black George Rylands that used to drive Mr. Hanshaw. If I’d a-took another step I’d a-been right into him, and so I thought, ‘Now, Ezekiel Rust, you’re doomed. They all knows that you’re here. They’re all on the scent.’ So then I don’t know what to do, and presently I see Black George turn away into the inn, so then I made one dart.
“So then I got out of Salisbury, and I come up out on a place, like it was downs, and there were some gipsy fellows there. I’d known some of them come round with baskets, but they didn’t know me, and I asked them which way I’d better go to get out of England, and they said they’d set me on the road, part of the way, and so we set off next day and we come to a town. I thought I was safe when I was with them, but, coming through that town, my blood run cold.”
“Why?” said Hi. “Were there more police?”
“No, Mr. Ridden, there was not more police, there was soldiers—soldiers after me, hundreds of ’em. I come into the town, and there was all they soldiers in red coats, looking for me. But I got past ’em and I come to a town, and there was a man wanting another man to help him take charge of a bull. He was coming out to these parts and there was to have been another man in charge of the bull, but the other man, if you understand me, Mr. Ridden, he didn’t want, when the time come, to live up to his bargain. And I didn’t want to let it be known, not at once, that I was eager to get out of the country, because that wouldn’t have done. They’d all have known that I was a murderer, if I let ’em think that. Naturally that was the first thing they’d have thought. So I pretended first I was afraid of bulls, and then I said I didn’t like to leave my old mother, and then I said I didn’t much like these foreign parts by what I’d heard of them. I let them think the wrong thing, you see, Mr. Highworth. But in the end I said I’d help take the bull. So then they said they didn’t want to run any risks, and said, ‘You’d better come on board straightaway.’ So they took me along and we passed through a gate where there was a lot of notices and there I read what made my blood run cold. Now I had always been against they photographs. Often people said to me, ‘Now you stand there and let me take your picture.’ But I knew better. ‘No,’ I always used to say. My golly, Mr. Highworth, I tell ’ee, there they’d got me all described and wrote out. ‘Wanted, for murder, suffering from a crushed left thumbnail,’ it said. It must have been Mrs. Thompson told them that.