“And I,” replied Tom, with a glance round in his tone, and a lowering of the voice, “I’d sooner I was caught by you, sir, than as any of the others was! For I’ve summat for to say to you, sir, summat for to arst you!” And over Tom’s open ruddy face there passed an expression of deep anxiety. “To ask me, Tom? Well?” “Oons, sir you’d tell me the truth, wouldn’t you? You’d be above telling lies to a poor fellow loike me!” went on the young man, wistfully. Tregenna looked amazed, as well he might, at this most unexpected speech. “I hope, Tom,” said he, “I’m above telling lies to any one.” “Well, sir, it’s loike to this ’ere: you han’t forgot, sir, that noight as you came to Rede Hall, have you?” “No, I’m not likely to forget that quickly!” “You’ll moind, sir, how ’twas Ann Price sent us after thee, in a passion.” “Ay, I’m not like to forget that either, Tom, nor your treatment of me when you came up with me!” Tom looked down, reddening. “Oons, sir,” said he, gruffly, “we’re rough customers, I know. But we had more than one account to settle with you, sir; and you see, you’d found out a bit too much to be let off loight! We had to turn out of the place where we’d met together for years, all along of you and your findings. And that wasn’t all neither!” And a significant frown puckered his brows once more. “Why, what other harm have I done you, than what I had to do in the course of my duty?” asked Tregenna. “You’d gotten the roight side of Ann!” growled Ann’s lover, angrily. “The right side! Nay, then I know not what getting the wrong side would be like!” retorted Tregenna, lightly. “For there’s no sort of ill treatment, short of actual murder, that I have not received at her hands, and I own I never meet her without watching her hands, to be sure she holds not a knife concealed in some fold of her dress, wherewith to stab me!” “Ay, that’s Ann all over!” said her lover, admiringly. “She’s got such a spirit, has Ann! But it’s just them ways of hers with you that makes me know she looks upon you with too koind an eye, sir. She loikes you, and she hates herself for loiking a king’s man, that’s what it is!” “Indeed!” said the young lieutenant, with a laugh. “Then I assure you, Tom, she’s vastly welcome to transfer her liking to some one else; for it’s wasted on me!” Tom scanned the speaker’s face narrowly, and then drew a long breath of relief. “You speak as if it was truth,” said he, at last, in a muttering tone. “Then, maybe, sir,” he went on, with deep earnestness, still keeping an anxious gaze upon Tregenna’s face, “maybe you don’t know where she is now?” He seemed to wait with breathless eagerness for the answer. “Most surely I do not,” replied Tregenna, promptly, “if she be not at Hurst Court, where I saw her near ten days ago.” Tom shook his head. “She ben’t there now, sir. Nobody hereabouts has a notion where she’s got to; so I thought as maybe it was you had spirited her away.”