“What do you mean?  Why are you making those faces at me?” cried the boy indignantly.

Farmer Blaize leaned round the Bantam to have a look at him, and beheld the stolidest mask ever given to man.

“Bain’t makin’ no faces at nobody,” growled the sulky elephant.

The farmer commanded him to face about and finish.

“A see T’m Baak’ll,” the Bantam recommenced, and again the contortions of a horrible wink were directed at Richard.  The boy might well believe this churl was lying, and he did, and was emboldened to exclaim—­

“You never saw Tom Bakewell set fire to that rick!”

The Bantam swore to it, grimacing an accompaniment.

“I tell you,” said Richard, “I put the lucifers there myself!”

The suborned elephant was staggered.  He meant to telegraph to the young gentleman that he was loyal and true to certain gold pieces that had been given him, and that in the right place and at the right time he should prove so.  Why was he thus suspected?  Why was he not understood?

“A thowt I see ’un, then,” muttered the Bantam, trying a middle course.

This brought down on him the farmer, who roared, “Thought!  Ye thought!  What d’ye mean?  Speak out, and don’t be thinkin’.  Thought?  What the devil’s that?”

“How could he see who it was on a pitch-dark night?” Richard put in.

“Thought!” the farmer bellowed louder.  “Thought—­Devil take ye, when ye took ye oath on’t.  Hulloa!  What are ye screwin’ yer eye at Mr. Feverel for?—­I say, young gentleman, have you spoke to this chap before now?”

“I?” replied Richard.  “I have not seen him before.”

Farmer Blaize grasped the two arms of the chair he sat on, and glared his doubts.

“Come,” said he to the Bantam, “speak out, and ha’ done wi’t.  Say what ye saw, and none o’ yer thoughts.  Damn yer thoughts!  Ye saw Tom Bakewell fire that there rick!” The farmer pointed at some musk-pots in the window.  “What business ha’ you to be a-thinkin’?  You’re a witness?  Thinkin’ an’t ev’dence.  What’ll ye say to morrow before magistrate!  Mind! what you says today, you’ll stick by to-morrow.”

Thus adjured, the Bantam hitched his breech.  What on earth the young gentleman meant he was at a loss to speculate.  He could not believe that the young gentleman wanted to be transported, but if he had been paid to help that, why, he would.  And considering that this day’s evidence rather bound him down to the morrow’s, he determined, after much ploughing and harrowing through obstinate shocks of hair, to be not altogether positive as to the person.  It is possible that he became thereby more a mansion of truth than he previously had been; for the night, as he said, was so dark that you could not see your hand before your face; and though, as he expressed it, you might be mortal sure of a man, you could not identify him upon oath, and the party he had taken for Tom Bakewell, and could have sworn to, might have been the young gentleman present, especially as he was ready to swear it upon oath.