But, even as I put the question, I caught sight of Giles at the stable pump, plunging his head and face into a pail of water. So I knew what had been the matter with _him_. Giles was a first-rate groom and a good servant, and it was very seldom indeed that he took more than was good for him, but it did happen at intervals. Old Jones arrived in obedience to the summons, and stood on his fat gouty legs in the hall while the Squire talked to him. The faith he put in that old constable was surprising, whose skill and discernment were about suited to the year One. His tale of the night's doings, as confirmed by other tales, was not very clear. At least, much satisfaction could not be got out of it. Some poachers congregated on a plot of land called Dyke's Neck--why it should have been so named nobody understood--were surprised by the keepers early in the night. A few stray shots were interchanged, no damage being done on either side, and the poachers made off, escaping not only scot-free but unrecognised. This last fact bore the keenest sting of all, and the Squire paced the hall in a fury. "You must unearth them," he said to Jones: "don't tell me. They can't have buried themselves, the villains!" "No need to look far for 'em, Squire," protested Jones. "It's them jail-birds, the three Standishes. If it's not, I'll eat my head." "Then why have you not taken up the three Standishes?" retorted the Squire. "Of course it is the Standishes." "Well, your honour, because I can't get at 'em," said Jones helplessly. "Jim, he is off somewhere; and Dick, he swears through thick and thin that he was never out of his bed last night; and t'other, Tom, ain't apperiently at home at all just now. I looked in at their kitchen on my way here, and that was all I could get out of Mary." It was at this juncture that Katrine arrived, preparatory to her morning's work with Lena. Old Jones and the Squire, still in the hall, were chanting a duet upon the poachers' iniquity, and she halted by me to listen. I was sitting on the elbow of the carved-oak settle. Katrine looked pale as a sheet. Girls, thought I, do not like to hear of these things. For I knew nothing then of her fears that the offenders had been her father and Mr. Reste. "If the poachers had been taken, sir--what then?" she said tremblingly to the Squire, in a temporary lull of the voices. "What then, Miss Barbary? Why then they would have been lodged in gaol, and the neighbourhood well rid of them," was the impulsive answer. "Snug and safe, miss," put in old Jones, shuffling on his gouty legs in his thick white stockings, "a-waiting to stand their trial next spring assizes at Worcester. Which it would be transportation for 'em, I hope--a using o' their guns indeed!" "Were they known at all?" gasped Katrine. "And might not the gamekeepers have shot _them_? Perhaps have killed them?"