My wits ran quick in them days, as was natural to a night-hawk, and I only waited till the young chap was off through the woods, and then nipped back into the grass field, fetched a haymaker’s rake, made fast a brave stone to ’un, got my night-lines up, and soon lowered down the rake over the spot where the bottle went in.  At the second drag I got him, and there, sure enough, was the thing that Mister Champernowne had throwed in the pool.  But it weren’t a bottle by no means.  Instead, I found a black, tin, waterproof canister a foot long; and, working at it, the lid soon came off.  Inside was one piece of paper and no more.  That was all the canister hid; and the next thing I done was to light up my lantern and see what wonderful matter it could be as the young man was at such pains to do away with so careful.  For Woodcotes House was two mile from the river, and Cranston Champernowne had been at all this trouble, you see, on the very day of his uncle’s death.

Well, I soon found out all about it, for the thing was simple enough.  The paper was a will, or, as I heard long after, a thing called a codicil—­a contrivance what you add to a will.  And it revoked and denied everything as the dead man had wrote before.  In a few words the paper swept away Squire Champernowne’s former wills and testaments, and left Woodcotes to Lawrence Champernowne, the son of General Sir Arthur and the brother of the chap as had just flung the paper in the river.

So there ’twas, and even a slower-witted man than me might have read the riddle in a moment.  No doubt young Mister Cranston thought himself the heir, and reckoned ’twas all cut and dried.  Then, rummaging here and there after his uncle was gone, he’d come upon this facer and found himself left in the cold.  The paper was dated two year back, and signed by two names of women-servants at Woodcotes.

Well, I soon came to myself afore this great discovery, and though, no doubt, the right and natural thing for me to have done, as a sporting sort of blade always open to the main chance, would have been to go to Lawrence Champernowne or his father, yet I hesitated; because, though I held a poacher’s ideas about game and such like, I wasn’t different from other folk in other matters.  I’d got religion from my mother, for she taught me the love of God, and father, the water-bailiff, he taught me the fear of God likewise; and if you’ve got them two things properly balanced in your intellects, you can’t go far wrong.  And at that moment the feeling in my mind was not to be on the make.  No, I swear to you I only felt sorry for the young chap as had done this terrible deed.  I was troubled for him, and considered very like the temptation was too great, that he’d just fallen into it in a natural fit of rage at his disappointment, and that presently, when he came to his senses, he’d bitterly mourn such a hookem-snivey deed.  For, of course, Champernownes were great folk, high above any small or mean actions,