“Nonsense,” said the Squire, in his quick way. “Loss! when you have every convenience about you! This used to be the fowl-house in Hopton’s time,” he added, rapping the side of the shed with his stick. “Why! you’ve been putting a padlock on it, Hill!”
For the door was fastened with a padlock; a new one, to judge by its look. Hill made no comment. He had taken up the rake again and was raking vigorously at the dead leaves. I wondered what he was shaking for.
“Have you any treasures here, that you should lock it up?”
“Only the watering-can, sir, and a few o’ my garden tools,” answered Hill. “There’s a heap of loose characters about, and nothing’s safe from ’em.”
Putting his back against the shed, the Squire suddenly called on Hill to face him, and entered on the business he had come upon. “Where was David Garth? Did he, Hill, know anything about him?”
Hill had looked pale before; I said so; but that was nothing to the frightful whiteness that took him now. Ears, lips, neck; all turned the hue of the dead. The rake shook in his grasp; his teeth chattered.
“Come, Hill,” said the Squire; “I see you have something to say.”
But Hill protested he had nothing to say: except that the boy’s absence puzzled him. The Squire put some home questions upon the points spoken of by Miss Timmens, showing Hill that we knew all. He then told him he might take his choice; answer, or go before the magistrates.
Apparently Hill saw the futility of holding out longer. His very aspect would have convicted him, as the Squire said: if he had committed murder, he could not have looked more guilty. Glancing shudderingly around on all sides, as though the air had phantoms in it, he whispered his version of the morning’s work.
It was true that he had gone to the house expecting to find David in it; and it was true that when he entered he found him flown. Not wishing to alarm the boy’s mother, he told Jim Batley that David had gone by early train to Worcester: he told the mother so. As to the boots, Hill declared they were his own, not David’s; and that Jim’s eyes must have been deceived in the size. And he vowed and declared he knew no more than this, or where David could have got to.