er noticed the name of Netherfield on any o' them old gravestones up
yonder? This gentleman's asking after it, and I know you mow that
churchyard grass time and again."

"Never seen it!" answered the new-comer. "But--strange things!--there
was a man come up to me the other night, this side o' Lesbury, and
asked that very question--not o' these parts, he wasn't. But--"

He stopped at that. Salter Quick dropped his knife and fork with a
clatter, and held up his right hand.

CHAPTER II

RAVENSDENE COURT

It was very evident to Claigue and myself, interested spectators, that
the new-comer's announcement, sudden and unexpected as it was, had had
the instantaneous effect of making Quick forget his beef and his rum.
Indeed, although he was only half-way through its contents, he pushed
his plate away from him as if food were just then nauseous to him; his
right hand lifted itself in an arresting, commanding gesture, and he
turned a startled eye on the speaker, looking him through and through
as if in angry doubt of what he had just said.

"What's that?" he snapped out. "What says you? Say it again--no, I'll
say it for you--to make sure that my ears ain't deceiving me! You met
a man--hereabouts--what asked you if you knew where there was graves
with a certain name on 'em? And that name was--Netherfield? Did you
say that?--I asks you serious?"

The drover, or shepherd, or whatever he was, looked from Quick to me
and then to Claigue, and smiled, as if he wondered at Quick's
intensity of manner.

"You've got it all right, mister," he answered. "That's just what I
did say. A stranger chap, he was--never seen him in these parts
before."

Quick took up his glass and drank. There was no doubt about his being
upset, for his big hand trembled.

"Where was this here?" he demanded. "Recent?"

"Two nights ago," replied the man readily. "I was coming home,
lateish, from Almwick, and met with this here chap a bit this side o'
Lesbury. We walked a piece of the road together, talking. And he asked
me what I've told you. Did I know these parts?--was I a native
hereabouts?--did I know any churchyards with the name Netherfield on
gravestones? And I said I didn't, but that there was such-like places
in our parts where you couldn't see the gravestones for the grass, and
these might be what he was asking after. And when we came to them
cross-roads, where it goes to Denwick one direction and Boulmer the
other, he left me, and I