The boy had eaten his breakfast before he reached Hatherton. So much the better; for the apparition of the Sergeant-Major would have left him totally without appetite. As it was, he was in an agony to be gone, every moment expecting to see him approach the little inn to arrest him and Tom.
Tom Orange was uneasy, I am sure, and very fidgety till the fly came round.
“You know Squire Fairfield of Wyvern?” said the hostess, while they were waiting.
“Ay,” said Tom.
“Did you hear the news?”
“What is it?”
“Shot the night before last in a row with poachers. Gentlemen should leave that sort o’ work to their keepers; but they was always a fightin’ wild lot, them Fairfields; and he’s lyin’ now a dead man—all the same—gave over by Doctor Willett and another—wi’ a whole charge o’ duck-shot lodged under his shoulder.”
“And that’s the news?” said Tom, raising his eyes and looking through the door. He had been looking down on the ground as Mrs. Gumford of the George told her story.
“There’s sharp fellows poachers round there, I’m told,” he said, “next time he’d a’ been out himself with the keepers to take ’em dead or alive. I suppose that wouldn’t answer them.”
“’Tis a wicked world,” said the lady.