“Oh, that ain’t this ’un,” answered the other, his good humour quite restored.  “This is a young man and tremendous big.  I ain’t so small myself, but he tops me by a head and shoulders and so he does most hereabouts.  Strong, too, with it, there ain’t so many would care to stand up against him, I can tell you.  Why, they do say he caught two poachers in the wood there last month and brought ’em out one under each arm like a pair of squealing babes.”

“Did he, though?” said Dunn.  “Take some doing, that, and I daresay the rest of the gang will try to get even with him for it.”

“Well, they do say as there’s been threats,” the other agreed.  “But what I says is as Mr. John can look after hisself all right.  There was a tale as a man had been dodging after him at night, but all he said when they told him, was as if he caught any one after him he would thrash them within an inch of their lives.”

“Serve them right, too,” exclaimed Dunn warmly.

Evidently this explained, in part at least, what had recently happened.  Mr. Clive, finding himself being followed, had supposed it was one of his poaching enemies and had at once attempted to carry out his threat he had made.

Dunn told himself, at any rate, the error would have the result of turning all suspicion away from him, and yet he still seemed very disturbed and ill at ease.

“Has Mr. Clive been here long?” he asked.

“It must be four or five years since his father bought the place,” answered his new acquaintance.  “Then, when the old man was killed a year ago, Mr. John inherited everything.”

“Old Mr. Clive was killed, was he?” asked Dunn, and his voice sounded very strange in the darkness.  “How was that?”

“Accident to his motor-car,” the other replied.  “I don’t hold with them things myself—­give me a good horse, I say.  People didn’t like the old man much, and some say Mr. John’s too fond of taking the high hand.  But don’t cross him and he won’t cross you, that’s his motto and there’s worse.”

Dunn agreed and asked one or two more questions about the details of the accident to old Mr. Clive, in which he seemed very interested.

But he did not get much more information about that concerning which his new friend evidently knew very little.  However, he gave Dunn a few more facts concerning Mr. John Clive, as that he was unmarried, was said to be very wealthy, and had the reputation of being something of a ladies’ man.

A little further on they parted, and Dunn took a side road which he calculated should lead him back to Bittermeads.

“It may be pure coincidence,” he mused as he walked slowly in a very troubled and doubtful mood.  “But if so, it’s a very queer one, and if it isn’t, it seems to me Mr. John Clive might as well put his head in a lion’s jaws as pay visits at Bittermeads.  But of course he can’t have the least suspicion of the truth—­if it is the truth.  If I hadn’t lost my temper like a fool when he whacked out at me like that I might have been able to warn him, or find out something useful perhaps.  And his father killed recently in an accident—­is that a coincidence, too, I wonder?”