The policeman nodded. “There was the three of you,” he said. “Dan, an’ you, an’ Sir Reginald’s son, Mr Henry. When you were all boys, ’twas a saying in Moreton that one was never seed without t’others. But rare rascals all three in them days! You’ve made my legs tired a many times, chasing of ’e out of the orchards.” “Such friendships ought to last for ever,” declared Titus, thoughtfully. “Mister Henry’s a good friend to me yet. When I got weakly about the breathing, ’twas him that made Sir Reginald take me on indoors. Though you’ll witness, Sweetland, that I’d have made a good enough gamekeeper.” The grey man nodded. “You was larning fast,” he admitted. “But not so fast as Daniel. He took to it like a duckling to water--in his blood, of course.” “An’ be Mr Henry his friend still?” asked the policeman. Titus Sim hesitated. “Mr Henry’s like his father--a stickler for old ways and a pillar of the nation. He got his larning at Eton--’tis different from what Dan got at the Board School. He hears these rumours about poaching, and he’s an awful hard young man--harder than his father; because there’s nobody in the world judges so hard as them that never have been tempted. No, to be frank, Mr Henry ain’t so favourable to Daniel as he used to be.” “Well, well,” said Bartley; “if ’tis proved as Dan had no hand in the burglary at Westcombe, I, for one, shall be thankful, an’ hope to see him a credit to his father yet. But that’s a very serious job, I warn ’e. Near five thousand pounds of plate gone, as clean as if it had all been melted and poured into a bog. Not a trace. An’ the house nearly eight mile by road from the nearest station.” “They think the thieves had a motor-car,” said the youngest of the party, Daniel’s admirer, the lad Prowse. “’Twas your son himself, Mr Sweetland, who thought of that; for I heard him tell the inspector so last week at the Warren Inn; an’ the inspector--Mr Gregory, I mean--slapped his leg an’ said ’twas the likeliest thing he’d heard.” They talked at length and the glasses were filled again. “As to Dan,” summed up Mr Bartley, “come a few weeks more an’ he’ll be married. There’s nought like marriage for pulling a man together; an’ she’m a very nice maiden by all accounts. Ban’t I right, gamekeeper?” “You are,” answered Sweetland. “Though I say it, Minnie Marshall’s too good for my son. I never met a girl made of properer stuff--so quiet and thoughtful. Many ladies I’ve seen in the sporting field weren’t a patch on her for sense an’ dignity. God He knows what she seed in Daniel. I should have thought that Sim here, with his nice speech, an’ pale face, an’ indoor manners, was much more like to suit her.” Under the table Titus Sim clenched his hands until the knuckles grew white. But on his face was a resigned smile. “Thank you for that word, Sweetland. ’Twas a knock-down blow; but, of course, my only wish is her happiness now. I pray and hope that Dan will make a good husband for her.”