‘I saw up on the hill-side a lantern travelling this way, then that way, so’—he made a zigzag indication in the air with his finger. ‘It went very slow. It went, so to speak, like a drop o’ rain on a window-pane, that goes this way, then it goes a little more that way, then it goes quite contrary, to the other side. Then it changes its direction once again and it goes a little faster.’
‘I wish you would go faster,’ said Jasper impatiently. ‘What did you see at last?’
‘I’m getting into it, but I must go my own pace,’ said Joseph with unruffled composure. ‘You understand me, brothers—I’m not speaking of a drop o’ rain on a window-glass, but of a lantern-light on the hill-side—and bless you, that hill-side was like a black wall rising up on my right hand into the very sky. Well then, the light it travelled like a drop o’ rain on a glass—first to this side, then to that. You’ve seen drops o’ rain how they travel’—he appealed to all who listened. ‘And I reckon you know how that all to once like the drop, after having travelled first this road, then that road, in a queer contrary fashion, and very slow, all to once like, as I said, down it runs like a winking of the eye and is gone. So exactly was it with thicky (that) there light. It rambled about on the face of the blackness: first it crawled this way, then it crept that; always, brothers, going a little lower and then—to once—whish!—I saw it shoot like a falling star—I mean a raindrop—and I saw it no more.’
‘And then?’
‘Why—and then I came back the same road I went down.’
‘You did not go into the bushes in search?’
‘How should I?’ answered Joseph, ‘I’d my best uniform on. I’d come out courting, not thief-catching.’
‘And you know nothing further?’
‘How should I? Didn’t I say I went back up the road same way as I’d come down? I warn’t bound to get my new cloth coat and trousers tore all abroad by brimbles, not for nobody. I know my duty better than that. The county pays for ‘em.’