“You are ninety-five,” Leonard went on. “It is time to speak. I have brought with me one who will recall a day—if you have ever forgotten it—of tragic memories, the day when you lost at once your wife and your brother-in-law. You have never forgotten that day, have you?”
The old man made no reply. But he closed his eyes, perhaps as a sign that he refused to listen.
“Sir, I have a message for you. It is from the man whom you saved from the gallows—the innocent man whom you saved at a trial for murder. He sent a message from his death-bed—words of gratitude and of prayer. The good deed that you did has grown, and borne fruit a hundredfold—your good deed. Let the grateful words of that man be some comfort to you.”
Again the old man made no sign.
At this point an unexpected interruption took place, for the door was opened, and a man, a villager, came clumping in noisily. Seventy years agone he was the boy who had done the bird-scaring.
“They told me”—he addressed Leonard, but he looked at the figure in the chair—“that you were here, and they said that he was going at last. So I came. I minded what you said. Did never a one suspect? That’s what you said. I don’t care for him now.” He nodded valiantly at the figure of his old master. “He won’t hurt no one—no more.”
He clumped across the room, being rheumatic, and planted himself before the chair, bringing his stick down with a bump on the floor.
“Did never a man suspect?” He looked round and held up his finger.
He suspected. And he knew.
“Old man”—he addressed himself directly to the silent figure—“who done that job? You done it. Nobody else done it. Nobody else couldn’t ha’ done it. Who done it? You done it. There was nobody else in the wood but you before John Dunning came along.”