Why on earth shouldn't I? It's robbery, you know, and I don't care any
more than my father does for being robbed."

"That was a nasty tumble of yours, sir."

"Yes, I suppose it _was_ something of a spill. But I'm not hurt, thank
you."

"It might ha' been a sight worse," said Charley Hannaford reflectively.
"A foot or two more, now--and the rock, if I remember, sloping outwards
just here below." He leaned his head sideways and seemed to drop a casual
glance over the ledge.

Walter knew that the drop just there was a very nasty one indeed.
"Oh, but yon's where I came over--I couldn't have fallen quite so wide--"
he began to explain, and checked himself, reading the queer strained smile
on Hannaford's face.

"I--I reckon we'll call it Providence, all the same," said the poacher.

Then Walter understood. The man was desperate, and _he_--he, Walter a
Cleeve, was a coward.

Had he known it, across the gully a pair of eyes were watching.
He had help within call. Jim Burdon had come to the upper end of the
plantation a few seconds too late to witness the accident. By the time he
reached the hedge there and peered over, Walter had disappeared; and Jim--
considerably puzzled, half inclined to believe that the stranger had
walked over the edge of the White Rock and broken his neck--worked his way
down the lateral fence beside the gully, to be brought up standing by the
sight of the man he sought, safe and sound, and apparently engaged in
friendly chat with Charley Hannaford.

But Walter a Cleeve's back was turned towards the fence, and again Jim
failed to recognise him. And Jim peered over the fence through a
gorse-whin, undetected even by the poacher's clever eyes.

"It's queer, too," went on Charley Hannaford slowly, as if chewing each
word. "I hadn't even heard tell they was expectin' you, down at the
Court."

"They are not," Walter answered. He scarcely thought of the words, which
indeed seemed to him to be spoken by somebody else. He was even
astonished at the firmness of their sound; but he knew that his face was
white, and all the while he was measuring Hannaford's lithe figure, and
calculating rapidly. Just here he stood at a disadvantage: a sidelong
spring might save him: it would take but a second. On the other hand, if
during that second or less . . . His eyes were averted from the verge, and
yet he saw it, and his senses apprised every foot of the long fall beyond.
While he thought it out, keepi