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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
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