Certainly the succession of trifling mishaps that had at first half-amused, half-enraged the village and had latterly aroused a large measure of resentment, had been conceived and carried out with such impish ingenuity as to convince a small minority that the culprit must be one of a gang of rough lads from Kirkby Mawm who were well-known to belong to the devil’s household brigade of mischief-makers. It was hard to believe that any grown man would take pleasure in changing the labels on the Drakes’ oil-cans as they stood on the cart in the carrier’s shed ready for despatch, so that the man who was waiting for boiled oil found himself supplied with linseed, and the farmwife whose stock of paraffin had run out stamped her foot in wrath when thick lubricating oil began to pour from the neck of the tin. After that, of course, the carrier boarded up his shed; but he might have saved himself the expense for the rascal was too wise to return upon his tracks. It looked a lad’s trick, too, when the door at the Grange which Maniwel had painted white was seen in the morning to be covered with soot and the sweep’s bag lying on the ground a few yards away: when Farmer Lambert’s new cart was dragged from the Drakes’ painting shed during the night and its coat of gorgeous scarlet ruined by the rain which had fallen in torrents. There was some division of opinion, I repeat, on the question of authorship; but there was none on the market value of Police Constable Stalker as an officer of the law, which it was unanimously agreed could hardly be lower. Whether or no Inman was aware that he was regarded with suspicion by any of his neighbours he bore himself at this time with a detached and contemptuous air that was his best defence; and he offered a simple explanation of each mishap as it occurred that always drew a waverer or two to his side. “Just another piece of blooming carelessness,” he would say with a shrug of the shoulders. “They’re both of ’em half-asleep most o’ their time.” The subtle poison worked, if only slowly; and even those who were well-disposed to the Drakes and ready to lay the charge at Inman’s door began to wonder if it was quite safe to entrust their jobs to a firm whose operations were attended with such bad luck. Fortunately Mr. Harris remained their constant friend, and work had never yet been scant.