“You can’t prove that to me, sir: not that there’s any felons or things in here. Show me that you don’t mean harm, and you shall go on.”
“Have you a stolen child here?”
Cookum’s mouth opened with genuine surprise. “A stolen child!”
“We have lost a little boy. I have reason to think that a man who was seen to enter this passage in the middle of the night knows something of him, and I have come to ask and see. Now you know all. Let me go on.”
The relief on the man’s face was great. “Honour bright, sir.”
“Don’t stand quibbling, man,” roared Tod passionately. “Yes!”
“I’ve got but one man in all the place. He have no boy with him, he haven’t.”
“But he may know something of one. What’s his name?”
“All the name he’ve given me is Jack.”
“I dare say it’s the same. Come! you are wasting time.”