Collingwood sat a long time that night, thinking over the things he had heard. He came to the conclusion that the domineering blacksmith was right in one of his dogmatic assertions--there was trouble ahead. And next morning, before going up to the Grange, he went to the nearest telegraph office, and sent Sir John Standridge a lengthy message in which he resigned the appointment that would have taken him to India. CHAPTER XII THE POWER OF ATTORNEY Collingwood had many things to think over as he walked across Normandale Park that morning. He had deliberately given up his Indian appointment for Nesta's sake, so that he might be near her in case the trouble which he feared arose suddenly. But it was too soon yet to let her know that she was the cause of his altered arrangements--in any case, that was not the time to tell her that it was on her account that he had altered them. He must make some plausible excuse: then he must settle down in Barford, according to Eldrick's suggestion. He would then be near at hand--and if the trouble, whatever it might be, took tangible form, he would be able to help. But he was still utterly in the dark as to what that possible trouble might be--yet, of one thing he felt convinced--it would have some connection with Pratt. He remembered, as he walked along, that he had formed some queer, uneasy suspicion about Pratt when he first hurried down to Barford on hearing of Antony Bartle's death: that feeling, subsequently allayed to some extent, had been revived. There might be nothing in it, he said to himself, over and over again; everything that seemed strange might be easily explained; the evidence of Pratt at the inquest had appeared absolutely truthful and straightforward, and yet the blunt, rough, downright question of the blacksmith, crudely voiced as it was, found a ready agreement in Collingwood's mind. As he drew near the house he found himself repeating Stringer's broad Yorkshire--"What wor that lawyer-clerk chap fro' Barford--Pratt--doin' about theer? What reight had he to be prowlin' round t' neighbourhood o' that bridge, and at that time? Come, now--theer's a tickler for somebody!" And even as he smiled at the remembrance of the whole rustic conversation of the previous evening, and thought that the blacksmith's question certainly might be a ticklish one--for somebody--he looked up from the frosted grass at his feet, and saw Pratt.