"He dare not face me after his brutal treatment of poor Tom," she had said; "and he knows the contempt in which I hold him. He cannot be so pitiful as to tell Hartley, intimate as he and my brother are. I have nothing to fear." She feared, though, all the same, though she did not know from whence the stroke she anticipated would fall. Dally was extremely pert, but then she always had been. She could know nothing; and in a defiant spirit, Leo settled herself down in a fool's paradise, eagerly waiting for the recovery of the squire. The one policeman from King's Hampton had been over and discoursed with the one policeman of Duke's Hampton _re_ the sacrilege at the church, and they had taken into their counsel the one policeman stationed at Chidley Beauwells, a village five miles away, but they had made nothing out of that. There was the attack, though, upon the squire, which seemed very promising, and the trio waited upon him as soon as he was pronounced well enough to be seen. The injury must have had an acerbating effect upon Tom Candlish, for, to use the constables' words, they came down out of the bedroom with fleas in their ears; and after having a horn of ale apiece, went back to the village. Their way was by the churchyard, where Moredock was sunning himself by leaning over the wall, so that the heat could play well upon his back, and he entered into conversation with the three myrmidons of the law in a questioning spirit. "Wouldn't give you any information, would he?" "No," said he of King's Hampton. "Told us to go to--you know." "No, I don't," said Moredock grimly, as if the allusion to this knowledge at his time of life was unsavoury. "But why wouldn't he tell you? Don't he want who it was caught?" "Said it was nothing of the kind," said he of Chidley Beauwells. "Yes," said the Duke's Hampton man; "said it was an accident, old boy--a fall." "Hi! Yes. I s'pose it would be," said Moredock drily. "Squire had a nasty accident before--a fall. Some people do have accidents of that sort." "Well," said the Duke's Hampton policeman, "we've done our duty, and that's enough for us." "Ay," said Moredock. "You've done your dooty, and that's enough for you." They parted, and Moredock chuckled. "Bats is nothing and moles is telescopes to 'em. Uniforms seems to make constables blind. Well, all the better for me. Hallo! where's carrier going to-day? Doctor's, p'raps, with some new stuff." The carrier was, however, not going to the doctor's, but passed on. "Don't quite know what to make of him," muttered Moredock. "That crack o' the head don't seem to have healed up, for he looks queer sometimes. I don't like the look of things, somehow; but we shall see--we shall see. Why don't Dally come down, too? I wanted to know how things is going there, and she ought to ha' got that shirt made by now.