"A robber you're not, Richard Vont," was the somewhat dazed reply, "and that the world knows. And there's summut more that the world knows, too, and that is that since you came back from Americy, never have you set foot outside that gate. There's friends waiting for you at the village, and there's them as smokes their pipe at night in the alehouse, whose company 'd do you no harm, but for some reason of your own you live like a hermit. And yet--yet--" "Go on, Mary," he said sturdily. "Finish it." "It's the nights that are baffling," Mrs. Wells declared. "There's some of your clothes in the morning wrings with sweat. There's sometimes the look in your face at breakfast time as though you'd had a hard day's work and done more than was good for your strength." "I'm no sleeper," he declared, "no sleeper at all. If I choose to walk in the garden, what business is it of yours, Mary, or of any one down in th' village? Answer me that, woman?" "Every man, I suppose, may please himself," she conceded grudgingly, "but I don't hold with mysteries myself." "Then you full well know," he replied, "how to escape from them. If they're too much for you, Mary, I've fended for myself before, and I can do it again." Mrs. Wells snorted. "Keep your own counsel, then, Richard." "And you keep yours," he advised. "You're my nearest of kin, Mary, though you're but my cousin's widdy. If you can learn to keep a still tongue in your head and do what's asked of you, there may be a trifle coming to you when my time comes. But if you get these curious fits on you, and they're more than you can stand; if you're going bleating from house to house in the village, and spending your time in tittle-tattling, then we'll part. Them's plain words, anyhow." Mrs. Wells became almost abject. "You've said the word, Richard, and I'll bide by it," she declared. "You can run races with yourself round the garden all night long, if you've a will. I'll close my eyes from now. But," she added, as a parting shot, "that clay on your old clothes takes a sight of getting off." Richard Vont ate his breakfast slowly and thoughtfully, entirely with the air of a man who accomplishes a duty. Afterwards, with the Bible under his arm, he took his accustomed seat at the end of the garden facing Mandeleys. There were tradesmen's carts and motor-vans passing occasionally on their way to and from the house, but he saw none of them. He was in his place, waiting, watching, perhaps, but without curiosity. Presently a summons came, however, which he could not ignore. He turned his head. David Thain, on a great black horse, had come galloping across the park from Broomleys, and had brought his restive horse with some difficulty up to the side of the paling. The greeting between the two was a silent, yet, so far as Vont was concerned, an eager one. "You know what that means?" David observed, pointing with his crop towards the house.