“I have my eyes and my ears. I see folks, and I hear a many words that isn’t meant for me. There’s a man, Breeds, your honour--ah! you know him; a feckless creature, but dangerous in his cups. He’s not to be trusted. He consorts wi’ rogues and hath a hanging reputation. I would your honour could lay him by the heels for harbouring cut-throats.” “I have my eye on him, Betty.” He could get nothing more definite from the girl. She was full of alarm and uneasiness on his account, but on what founded she had a difficulty in explaining. She knew only that of late certain strangers, of a somewhat villainous cast, were housed within the walls of the old wayside tavern; that occasionally a couple of them would drop into the tap of the “First Inn,” and secretly terrify her, secretly listening, with muttered innuendoes and hoarse whisperings on the subject of some projected scheme of roguery. Then Stockbridge was little more than a rustic village--a boorish community of clodpolls, that nightly slept away the memory of its daily toil in a beery stupor of indifference; and what practical influence could thence be brought to bear on blackguards predetermined to some deed of darkness? The moral was all of woman’s intuition, and therefore to be accorded respect. Mr. Tuke acknowledged this; but he laughed away Betty’s fears; while she, good girl, forgetful of her right of offence, did entreat him, with many pretty words and troubled looks, and a clasping of her hands--olive as young ripening filberts--to be on his guard. He saw her drive away and disappear. Then, with set lips and a dour contraction of his eyebrows, he made for the house to order his horse to be saddled. He was a man whose constitutional good-nature underlay whole stories of determination. The topmost of these was to temporize with no discomfort, moral or physical; but to strike at the root of the trouble before analyzing it. He would never have a tooth that pained him stopt; but must suffer the moment’s wrench to save days of dull aching. Now it was that he saw the centre of the unaccountable to be that same beetled-browed tavern. To the “Dog and Duck” he would ride forthwith, and so seek counsel of the very heart of the mystery. CHAPTER XVII. Oppressive dusk was drooping as Mr. Tuke came in sight of the lonely tavern on the downs. The inconsistent moodiness of autumn had fallen into another humour as the day declined. The steely thrust of wind at night--a morning cold and fair and pure, such as ever seems an earnest of weeks of serene tranquillity--and then, as noon ticked into evening, a dull fall in the barometer, and gathering battalions of clouds rolling to the front, with a noise of rumbling in them like the labouring wheels of gun-carriages--such was the record of twenty-four hours.