She coloured, moderating her pace with an effort. Once again the odd nervousness engendered by his presence had descended on her. It was as though something in the man's dominating personality strung all her nerves to a high tension of consciousness, and she felt herself overwhelmingly sensible of his proximity.
He smiled down at her.
“Then—if you're not in any hurry to get home—will you let me take you round by Crabtree Moor? It's part of a small farm of mine, and I want a word with my tenant.”
Sara acquiesced, and, Trent, having speedily transacted the little matter of business with his tenant, they made their way across a stretch of wild moorland which intersected the cultivated fields lying on either hand.
In the dusk of the evening, with the wan light of the early moon deepening the shadows and transforming the clumps of furze into strange, unrecognizable shapes of darkness, it was an eerie enough place. Sara shivered a little, instinctively moving closer to her companion. And then, as they rounded a furze-crowned hummock, out of the hazy twilight, loping along on swift, padding feet, emerged the figure of a man.
With a muttered curse he swerved aside, but Trent's arm shot out, and, catching him by the shoulder, he swung him round so that he faced them.
“Leggo!” he muttered, twisting in Trent's iron grasp. “Leggo, can't you?”
“I can, but I'm not going to,” said Trent coolly. “At least, not till you've explained your presence here. This is private property. What are you doing on it?”
“I'm doing no harm,” growled the man sullenly.
“No?” Trent passed his free hand swiftly down the fellow's body, feeling the bulge of his coat. “Then what's the meaning of those rabbits sticking out under your coat? Now, look here, my man, I know you. You're Jim Brady, and it's not the first, nor the second, time I've caught you poaching on my land. But it's the last. Understand that? This time the Bench shall deal with you.”