“I was, but I did not actually see it done. One of our men and two constables swore at the inquest that they saw Walter’s arm fly up and the man go down. It was so dark and everything was so mixed up that one could hardly tell what was happening, but an inn-keeper named Evans was close by, and he saw the blow struck. He was one of the men caught, and he confessed everything.”
She was really interested, and was listening with her lips parted.
“When I saw Walters making off I followed hard. I made up my mind I would get hold of him if I could, but he was on a good mare, and he took me over the worst places he could find; I very nearly came to grief among the boulders at a brook, the light was bad and they were so slippery, but I got through somehow, and I heard him in Crishowell Lane not far ahead. When he got to the top of it, he made for the Black Mountain as hard as he could, and I kept within sound of his hoofs till we were about a quarter of a mile from his own farm; then I heard him pull up into a walk. When I rode up I saw that the horse was riderless, so I suppose he must have slipped off somewhere along the foot of the mountain and left me to follow it. That was the second time he had made a fool of me.”
“Did you know him before?”
“I met him not far from that very place, as I was coming down to Waterchurch from London the day after Christmas. I rode from Hereford on, and lost my way in the fog by the mountain. He was groping about too, and he pretended to go out of his road to show me mine—devil that he is—but I know why he did it now.”
“Why?”
“He rode with me so as to talk about the riot, for every one knew that there would be one; so he put me on the wrong scent; he seemed to have some secret information about it, and it tallied with other rumours we had heard, so the police and the yeomanry were kept night after night at the gate by the river at Llangarth. If it had not been for a boy who saw the rioters making for the toll by Crishowell Lane, and who ran all the way to the town with the information, they would have got off scot-free. What would I not give to catch that man!”
“I am afraid you are very vindictive, Mr. Fenton.”
“They are scouring the country steadily,” continued he, unheeding, “but they can find no trace of him. It is extraordinary.”
But Isoline had grown tired of the subject now that the sensational part of it was over, and she directed her companion’s attention to some passing object.