"Plague on the man!" cried Timothy, in vexation. "But we shall catch him yet, I promise you. Prithee, did the constable search the men ere you came away?"
"There was small need to search 'em, my master. The booty they took was scarce so portable as to be stowed away beneath their jerkins. We found it all in two great meal-sacks that they carried off from the barn. And a pretty catalogue it was withal—item, three young capons; item, one fat hen; item, a sucking pig, divers farm implements, and a lordly goose that Dame Trevenen the hen-wife was feeding up for Christmas."
"Ay, a goodly haul, o' my conscience," agreed Timothy. "But found ye nought of what the rogues stole from the old man?"
"Nay," answered Jake with a shake of his head. "Although 'tis true that young Robin Redfern passing through the dingle early this morning, did come upon an old and worthless wallet, which might indeed have belonged to the man you speak of. 'Twas empty, though—empty as a hatched egg,—and Robin left it where it lay among last year's brambles."
"Ah! he had better have brought it with him," said Timothy, "for it will serve as evidence to convict the thieves alike of the stealing of the poultry and the wounding of Master Gilbert. And now," he added, "what canst tell me touching this same old man? Didst see him yesternight after I left him on the road?"
Jake Thew nodded and smiled.
"That we did, my master," said he. "We encountered him nigh unto Modbury Bridge. He was tramping along full contented and jovial, singing lustily enough to wake the very birds in the trees. 'Twas the ballad of The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green that he sang. And in truth he might well have been that same beggar himself, so ill-favoured was he, and so poorly clad withal."
"Ay," rejoined Trollope, "but, if I mind aright, your beggar man of Bednall Green did turn out in the end to be a man of substance, and more wealthy than any one of his daughter's wooers. Whereas this Jacob Hartop hath not a groat in the world to call his own, saving what he may claim, by virtue of his calling, from the seamen's chest at Chatham, which Sir Francis Drake hath made for the relief of aged mariners."
"He will not want for friendly help in these parts, howsoever," remarked Thew, "for it seemeth he was born in Modbury village, and there be many there still living who have some remembrance of him as a young man ere he went upon the sea, and who will gladly give him both food and shelter. There is the widow Frampton for one, who took him into her cottage yesternight and gave him a supper and a bed, by reason that he sailed in the same ship with her goodman to the Spanish Main. You will find him there even now, sir, if so be you would see him."