"We will come back in the morning," I said to Elsie, "and see what we can find. Piebald Bess never came back this road!"
"As, indeed, we might have seen before this by the single tracks," she added. And, indeed, it was no great discovery after all. But old Codling and the village men just took it for granted, and as many of the farmers and even my father came in conveyances there was soon no lack of tracks all over the road.
But Elsie and I kept our counsel and made tryst for the morning. It is terrible to get bitten with the wanting to find out things. The more you know the more you want to know.
Next morning it was still and clear, with a promise of heat. Elsie had asked Nance Edgar if she could go, but I had dispensed with asking my father. Indeed, so long as he was assured that I was the cleverest boy in school, and at the top of the topmost class, he did not trouble much about me, having other things on his mind. And Mr. Mustard was always ready to tell him all that. Besides it was true. I was not so clever as Elsie, and I did not pretend to be. But I could lick everybody in Breckonside school into fits, and the master was cowed of my father. I think he would have let me sit on his tall hat!
This morning was a Friday, as I remember, and there were plenty of men searching the moor, prowling about the woods, some with picks and shovels, some just with their hands in their pockets. They were looking for Harry Foster. The East Dene police, too, were all about the edges of Sparhawk Wood, as important as if they knew all about it but wouldn't tell. One of them, posted by the big, black patch to keep people off, first told us to go back, and then asked where we were going.
Elsie merely told him that so far as she knew the road went further—on to Bewick Upton, in fact.
"Are you the kids that came across the moor and found this—and the prisoner?"
To make him civil we told him we were, but that Davie Elshiner was surely innocent and would not harm a fly.
"That's as may be," said the policeman; "what did he say when you woke him?"
We told the man that Davie was afraid of being suspected, having been last seen with the missing man, also how he was sure that because he was a known poacher people would not believe him.