But I was wrong.  Looking upstream by good chance afore I got to work, I saw a man in the meadow moonlight.  There he was, making for the woods.  He was following the path I followed, and in five minutes I saw that he’d be on the river-bank within ten yards of me.  Of course, I thought the chap was after me and had tracked me down.  It astonished me a good bit to mark him, and I saw he was a tall, slim man, much lighter than me, though very near the same height.  He didn’t tally with my knowledge of any of the Woodcotes keepers, so I felt better and hoped as it might be a stranger, or a lunatic, or somebody as wouldn’t be feeling any interest in me.  But I had to shift, of course, so I nipped off my rock and went under the bank where the ivy fell over at the tail of the salmon pool.  ’Twas a deep, sandy-bottomed reach, with the bank dipping in steeply o’ one side and a shelving, pebbly ridge the other.  The river narrowed at the bottom of the pool and fell over a fall.  So there I went, and looked through the ivy unseen and watched my gentleman along the river-path.

He came, and the light of the moon shone on him between two trees, so that I could mark who ’twas; and then I seed the man of all others in the world I’d least have counted to see.  For there, if you please, went young Mister Cranston Champernowne, the nephew of the dead man, and thought to be heir to Woodcotes!  For Squire never married, but he had a good few nephews, and two was his special favourites:  this one and his brother, young Lawrence Champernowne.  They were the sons of General Sir Arthur Champernowne, a famous fighter who’d got the Victoria Cross in India, and carried half the alphabet after his name.

Well, there stood the young youth, and even in the owl-light I could see he was a bit troubled of spirit.  He looked about him, moved nervously, and then fetched something out of his pocket.  ’Twas black and shining, and I felt pretty sure ’twas a bottle; but I only had time to catch one glimpse of it, for he lifted his arm and flung it in the pool.  It flashed and was gone, and then, before the moony circles on the water had got to the bank, the man was off.  He walked crooked and shaky, and something told me as the young fellow had done terrible wrong and felt it.

Whatever ’twas he’d hid, it lay now in the deepest part of the river, and that, no doubt, he knew.  But I knowed more.  The bottom where his bottle was lying happened to be fine sand with a clear lift to the little beach; and so, given a proper tool, ’twas easy enough to rake over the river-bed and fetch up anything of any size on that smooth surface.

Of course, my first thought was to fetch that bottle out of the water; but then a cold shiver went through me, and I told myself to mind my own business and leave Cranston Champernowne to mind his.  Yet somehow I couldn’t do that.  There was a sporting side to it, and a man like me wasn’t the sort to sit down tamely afore such a great adventure.  So I said to myself:  “I’ll have that bottle!”