But even to that there was no direct answer. "I came to this place partly to see Rupert Trevlyn," were the words that issued from his lips. "I knew his father; he was my dear friend."
"Who can he be?" was the question reiterating itself in Nora's active brain. "Are you a lawyer?" she asked, the idea suddenly occurring to her: as it had, you may remember, to old Canham.
Mr. Daw coughed. "Lawyers are keen men," was his answering remark, and Nora could have beaten him for its vagueness. But before she could say more, an interruption occurred.
This conversation had been carried on aloud; neither the stranger nor Nora having deemed it necessary to speak in undertones. The consequence of which was, that those in the midst of whom they stood had listened with open ears, drawing their own deductions—and very remarkable deductions some of them were. The knife-grinder—though a stranger to the local politics, and totally uninterested in them—had listened with the rest. One conclusion he hastily came to, was, that the remarkable-looking gentleman with the white beard was a lawyer; and he pushed himself to the front.
"You be a lawyer, master," he broke in, with some excitement. "Would you mind telling of me whether they can harm me. If I ain't at liberty to ply my trade under a roadside hedge but I must be took up and punished for it, why, it's a fresh wrinkle I've got to learn. I've done it all my life; others in the same trade does it; can the law touch us?"
Mr. Daw had turned in wonderment. He had heard nothing of the grinding-machine in connection with the accident, and the man's address was unintelligible. A score of voices hastened to enlighten him, but before it was well done, the eager knife-grinder's voice rose above the rest.
"Can the laws touch me for it, master?"
"I cannot tell you," was the answer.
The man's low brow scowled fitfully: he was somewhat ill-looking to the eye of a physiognomist. "What'll it cost?" he roughly said, taking from his pocket a bag in which was a handful of copper money mixed with a sprinkling of small silver. "I might know. A lawyer wouldn't give nothing for nothing, but I'll pay. If the laws can be down upon me for grinding a knife in the highway open to the world, all I can say is, that the laws is infamous."
He stood looking at the stranger, with an air of demand, not of supplication—and rather insulting demand, too. Mr. Daw showed no signs of resenting the incipient insolence; on the contrary, his voice took a kind and sympathising tone.