Timmy had a special reason for wishing to know what was going on in this stable-yard, so, after a moment’s thought, he walked deliberately through the gates as if he had some business there, and then he saw that two men, one of whom was a stranger to him, were tidying up the place in a very leisurely, thoroughgoing manner.

The back door of The Trellis House, as the quaint-looking, long, low building to the right was incongruously named, opened into the stable-yard and by the door was a bench.  Timmy walked boldly across the yard and established himself on the bench and his dog, Flick, jumped up and sat sedately by him.  The little boy then took a small black book out of his pocket.  The book was called “The Crofton Boys” and Timmy had chosen it because the name of the new tenant of The Trellis House was Mrs. Crofton, a friend, as he was aware, of his godfather, Godfrey Radmore.  He wondered if she had any boys.

The two men, busy with big new brooms, came up close to where Timmy was sitting.  When the child, obviously “one of the gentry,” had walked into the stable-yard, they had abruptly stopped talking; but now, seeing that he was reading intently, and apparently quite uninterested in what they were doing, they again began speaking to one another, or rather one of them, a hard-bitten, shrewd-looking man, much the older of the two, began talking in what was, though Timmy was not aware of it, a Cockney dialect.

“You won’t find ’er a bad ’un to work for, m’lad.  I speak of folks as I find them.  I’m not one to take any notice of queer tales!”

“Queer tales.  What be the queer tales, Mister Piper?”

Timmy knew this last speaker.  He was the baker’s rather sharp younger son, and Mrs. Crofton had just engaged him as handy man.

The older man lowered his voice a little, but Timmy, who, while his eyes seemed glued to the pages of the book he held open, was yet listening with all his ears, heard what followed quite clearly.

“It ain’t for me to spread ill tales after what I’ve told you, eh?  But the Colonel’s death was a reg’lar tragedy, ’twas, and some there were who said that ’is widder wasn’t exactly sorry.  ’E were a melancholy cove for any young woman to ’ave to live with.  But there, as my old mother used to say, ‘any old barn-door can keep out the draught!’”

The younger man looked up:—­“What sort o’ tragedy?” he asked.

“The Colonel pizened ’isself, and the question was—­did ‘e do it o’ purpose?  Some said yes, and some said no.  I was in it by a manner of speaking.”

“You was in it?”

The boy left off working, and gazed at the other eagerly:—­“D’you mean you saw him do it?”

“I was the first to see ’im in his agony—­I calls that being in it.  And I was called upon to give evidence at the inquest held on the corpse.”

The man looked round him furtively as he spoke.  The little boy sitting by the back door of the house caused him no concern, but he did not want what he said to be overheard by the two new maid-servants who had arrived at The Trellis House that morning.