I suppose 'tis, who took him away outside?'

'Ay, he's mine, so says t' Church an' t' law, Aah b'lieve, but 'od
rabbit him, Aah says, who knaws the clumsiness o' the creature. Just fit
for nowt else but cuttin' up t' bait for t' harrin' fishin'.'

'Been here long?' says I further, carelessly.

'Six months mair or less,' says she with a snap, eyeing me suspiciously.

'Well, here's for luck and a smarter man at the next time of asking,'
and with that I tossed down the ale, paid the reckoning, and strode out
to the stable, for nothing further was to be got out of the vinegar lips
of Mrs. Boniface.

I looked narrowly round the low-roofed and ill-lit stable, but no sign
of a big roan horse anywhere did I see, only a jack-spavined cob, such
as a fishwife might hawk her fish about with.

'Ever seen or heard tell of that big roan of Farmer Allison's, strayed,
stolen, or lost, about six months since?' so I accosted Boniface anew,
on finding him rubbing down my horse's hocks with a bit of straw.

'Noah, sir, not Aah; Aah nevver seen 'im, sir. What soart o' a mak o'
horse was 'e, sir?'

I looked him full in the face as question and answer passed, and not a
shred of intelligence could I detect in his opaque, fish-like eyes.

'Oaf-rocked,' truly enough; he seemed as incapable of dissimulation as a
stalled ox, and with a heavy feeling of disappointment I inquired what
was to pay, and rode away down the slope.

'Curious,' I mused, 'how imagination plays one tricks at times! Once get
the idea of a red beard into your mind, and Barbarossa is as often met
with as the robin redbreast.'

Then all in a moment my eye caught in the spongy bottom a thin mark cut
clearly crescent-wise upon the turf. There was something strangely
familiar about the horseshoe curve. Then I remembered the unshod roan of
the night before.

'Twas the same impress, for in neither case was there any trace of the
iron rim. 'Where the horse is the rider will not be far away,' thinks I,
and hope kindled afresh in my heart, as I rode slowly on, resolving
various conjectures.

I determined finally to go call upon the farmer at Kirkleatham, whose
heifer it was, as I had learnt, that had been killed and carried off the
night before.

He was said to be tightfisted, so probably would be in a mood for
revenge, and ready enough to join in any scheme for discovery of the
reiver.

As luck had it, Farmer Johnson was within doors, and in a fine taking
about the lo