The man looked at him vengefully, eyed the pistol in his captor’s hand, weighed the forces against him, and then slowly and sullenly untied the rusty black silk handkerchief which encircled his brawny throat, and threw it on the table. Something inside the handkerchief struck sharply on the wood. ‘I thought as much,’ said Churchill. He untwisted the greasy wisp of silk, whereupon his wife’s collet necklace and the large single stones she wore in her ears fell upon the table. Churchill put the gems into his pocket without a word. ‘Is that all?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ the man answered, with an oath. Churchill looked at him keenly. ‘You will go straight from here to jail,’ he said, ‘so concealment wouldn’t serve you much. You are a gipsy, I think?’ ‘I am.’ ‘What brought you here to-night?’ ‘I came to see a relation.’ ‘Here, on these premises?’ ‘At the lodge. The woman you’ve chosen for your lodge-keeper is my mother.’ ‘Rebecca Mason?’ ‘Yes.’ Churchill took a turn or two up and down the room thoughtfully. ‘Since you’ve been so uncommonly kind to her, perhaps you’ll strain a point in my favour,’ said the gipsy. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to rob you if I hadn’t been driven to it by starvation. It goes hard with a man when he has a wolf gnawing his vitals, and stands outside an open window and sees a lot of women with thousands of pounds on their neck, in the shape of blessed gems that do no more real good to any one than the beads our women bedizen themselves with. And then he sees the old ivy roots are thick enough to serve for a ladder, and the windows upstairs left open and handy for him to walk inside. That’s what I call temptation. Perhaps _you_ were outside the good things of this world at some time of your life, and can feel for a poor wretch like me.’ ‘I have known poverty,’ answered Churchill, wondrously forbearing towards this vagrant, ‘and endured it?’ ‘Yes, but you hadn’t to endure it for ever. Fortune was kind to you. It isn’t often a man drops into such a berth as this by a fluke. You’ve got your property, and you may as well let me off easily, for my mother’s sake?’ ‘You don’t suppose your mother is more to me than any other servant in my employ,’ said Churchill, turning upon him sharply. ‘Yes, I do. You wouldn’t go to the gipsy tents for a servant unless you had your reasons. What should have brought you to Eborsham to hunt for a lodge-keeper?’ The mention of that fatal city startled Churchill. Seldom was that name uttered in his hearing. It was among things tabooed. ‘I’m sorry I can’t oblige you by condoning a felony,’ he said, in his most tranquil manner. ‘As a justice of the peace any sentimentality on my part would be somewhat out of character. The utmost I can do for you is to get the case heard without delay. You may anticipate the privilege of being committed for trial, to-morrow at noon, at the petty sessions.’