s apart and eyes staring, while Tom let fall his knife and thrust
his chair back over the stone floor.

They had been eating and listening to the conversation outside, till it
reached its climax in the following words:

"What, man? You don't know what he says."

"What he says!" chuckled the wheelwright. "Ay, I heerd what he said; a
whole heap o' bad words till I checked him, and let him feel he'd best
howd his tongue."

"But you know what he says about who shot at him?"

"Nay, but if he says as it were me, I'll go and pitch him into the
watter."

"You did not hear, then?" cried the squire, huskily. "Hickathrift, he
says it was done by those boys!"

"What!" roared the wheelwright.

"It's a lie, father!" shouted Dick, recovering himself and running out.
"Here, ask Tom."

"Why, of course it's a lie," cried Tom.

"But that man says--" cried the squire.

"Yah!" shouted Hickathrift angrily, "they never shot him; they heven't
got no goon."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

UNDER CLOUDS.

Thorpeley was not badly hurt, so the doctor said when he came; but, as
usual, he added, "If it had been an inch or two more to the right an
important vessel would have been divided, and he would have bled to
death."

But if the constable was not badly wounded, though the injury caused by
a bullet passing through his leg was an ugly one, the reputations of
Dick Winthorpe and Tom Tallington had received such ugly wounds that
their fathers found it difficult to get them cured.

For Thorpeley stuck to his first story, that he suspected the two boys
to be engaged in some nefarious trick, and he had watched them from the
time they borrowed the wheelwright's punt. He went on to describe how
he had offended them by keeping his eye upon their movements, and told
how they had tried to smother him by leading him into a dangerous
morass, while just at dusk, as he was watching their boat, he saw them
start towards him, and evidently believing that they were unseen from
where they had tied their punt, they had deliberately taken aim at him
and shot him.

The squire questioned him very sharply, but he adhered to everything.
He swore that he saw them thrust the punt away, and go into the misty
darkness; and then when they had heard his cries, they came back and
landed, evidently repentant and frightened, and then helped him down to
the boat.

"But," said the squire, "it might have been two other people in a punt
who shot at you."

"Two