“I thank you for what you have done,” frankly spoke Mr. Elster.

“It’s nothing, sir.  He’ll be dodging about after his prey; but I’ll dodge about too, and thwart his game if I can, though I have to swear that Lord Hartledon’s not himself.  What’s an oath, more or less, to me?”

“Where have I seen you before?” asked Val.

“Hard to say,” returned Pike.  “I have knocked about in many parts in my time.”

“Are you from this neighbourhood?”

“Never was in these parts at all till a year or so ago.  It’s not two years yet.”

“What are you doing here?”

“What I can.  A bit of work when I can get it given to me.  I went tramping the country after I left the regiment—­”

“Then you have been a soldier?” interrupted Mr. Elster.

“Yes, sir.  In tramping the country I came upon this place:  I crept into a shed, and was there for some days; rheumatism took hold of me, and I couldn’t move.  It was something to find I had a roof of any sort over my head, and was let lie in it unmolested:  and when I got better I stayed on.”

“And have adopted it as your own, putting a window and a chimney into it!  But do you know that Lord Hartledon may not choose to retain you as a tenant?”

“If Lord Hartledon should think of ousting me, I would ask Mr. Elster to intercede, in requital for the good turn I’ve done him this day,” was the bold answer.

Mr. Elster laughed.  “What is your name?”

“Tom Pike.”

“I hear a great deal said of you, Pike, that’s not pleasant; that you are a poacher, and a—­”

“Let them that say so prove it,” interrupted Pike, his dark brows contracting.

“But how do you manage to live?”

“That’s my business, and not Calne’s.  At any rate, Mr. Elster, I don’t steal.”

“I heard a worse hint dropped of you than any I have mentioned,” continued Val, after a pause.

“Tell it out, sir.  Let’s have the whole catalogue at once.”

“That the night my brother, Mr. Elster, was shot, you were out with the poachers.”

“I dare say you heard that I shot him, for I know it has been said,” fiercely cried the man.  “It’s a black lie!—­and the time may come when I shall ram it down Calne’s throat.  I swear that I never fired a shot that night; I swear that I no more had a hand in Mr. Elster’s death than you had.  Will you believe me, sir?”

The accents of truth are rarely to be mistaken, and Val was certain he heard them now.  So far, he believed the man; and from that moment dismissed the doubt from his mind, if indeed he had not dismissed it before.

“Do you know who did fire the shot?”

“I do not; I was not out at all that night.  Calne pitched upon me, because there was no one else in particular to pitch upon.  A dozen poachers were in the fray, most of them with guns; little wonder the random shot from one should have found a mark.  I know nothing more certain than that, so help—­”