“He told me to send word to you. ‘Bumpett,’ he says, ‘Mr. Bumpett at Abergavenny; don’t you forget,’ an’ he went off with his head agin my shoulder. How I got him along here I don’t rightly know. He’s a fair-sized man to be hefting about.”
The old man looked keenly into George’s face.
“What did he want with me?” he inquired.
“Indeed I never thought for to ask him,” said Williams simply. “’Twas two nights ago, I was going up by Red Field Farm to look round a bit”—here both men’s eyes dropped—“and about one o’clock I was nigh them steep bits o’ grazing, an’ come straight on to him. Lying down in the ditch he was, not twenty yards from Crishowell Lane. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
“Well, to be sure!” exclaimed Bumpett. “Was it drink?” he asked after a pause.
“Drink? no!” cried George. “I took a piece of ice from the road and put it on his head. He come to then. I never saw such a look as he give me when he saw me, and he fought like a wild beast, that he did, when he felt my hand on him, though he was as weak as a rabbit when I got him up. ’Tis plain enough now why, though indeed I did wonder then. He’s done for Vaughan the toll-keeper, too; knocked him stone dead.”
Bumpett stared blankly. For once in his life he was quite taken aback.
“He was out wi’ Rebecca,” explained Williams. “I guessed that by the strange hair he had tied all over his head so firm it were hard to get it loose.”
“What did you do with it?” inquired the Pig-driver sharply.