There was no doubt that they had been impressed by the clothes he wore; and having no wish to provoke similar comments from his grandmother and Hannah, Swithin took the precaution, on arriving at Welland Bottom, to enter the homestead by the outhouse. Here he deposited the cap and coat in secure hiding, afterwards going round to the front and opening the door in the usual way.
'Only to hear what have been seed to-night, Mr. Swithin! The work-folk have dropped in to tell us!'
In the kitchen were the men who had outstripped him on the road. Their countenances, instead of wearing the usual knotty irregularities, had a smoothed-out expression of blank concern. Swithin's entrance was unobtrusive and quiet, as if he had merely come down from his study upstairs, and they only noticed him by enlarging their gaze, so as to include him in the audience.
'We was in a deep talk at the moment,' continued Blore, 'and Natty had just brought up that story about old Jeremiah Paddock's crossing the park one night at one o'clock in the morning, and seeing Sir Blount a-shutting my lady out-o'-doors; and we was saying that it seemed a true return that he should perish in a foreign land; when we happened to look up, and there was Sir Blount a-walking along.'
'Did it overtake you, or did you overtake it?' whispered Hannah sepulchrally.
'I don't say 'twas _it_,' returned Sammy. 'God forbid that I should drag in a resurrection word about what perhaps was still solid manhood, and has to die! But he, or it, closed in upon us, as 'twere.'
'And I said "Good-night, strainger,"' added Chapman.
'Yes, "Good-night, strainger,"--that wez yer words, Natty. I support ye in it.'
'And then he closed in upon us still more.'
'We closed in upon he, rather,' said Chapman.
'Well, well; 'tis the same thing in such matters! And the form was Sir Blount's. My nostrils told me, for--there, 'a smelled. Yes, I could smell'n, being to leeward.'
'Lord, lord, what unwholesome scandal's this about the ghost of a respectable gentleman?' said Mrs. Martin, who had entered from the sitting-room.
'Now, wait, ma'am. I don't say 'twere a low smell, mind ye. 'Twere a high smell, a sort of gamey flaviour, calling to mind venison and hare, just as you'd expect of a great squire,--not like a poor man's 'natomy, at all; and that was what strengthened my faith that 'twas Sir Blount.'