"_I'm taking a great liberty_," it ran. "_I am in great trouble, and you are the one person who can help me. If you would not have two little children go hungry all winter, you will meet me by the planting at Hallows Brig in the gloaming to-morrow. I saw you at The Larches, and thought I could trust you._"
"Very confiding of Miss Johnstone, whoever she is, but I'm thankful my conscience is clear," thought Dane. It was unfortunate that he did not obey the first impulse which prompted him to destroy the note. Instead of this, he lighted another cigar, and sat down to consider the affair.
Just then the local constable, who on an eventful occasion had also stuck fast in the hedge, came tramping through the stubble with elephantine gait.
"Grand weather the day, sir," he beamed. "Ye will have heard we grippit the man who broke yere heid."
"I'm summoned as a witness; but who is Mary Johnstone?" asked Dane. "You should know everybody about here."
"Old Rab Johnstone's daughter; and that's no great credit to the lass. Rab's overfond of the whisky, and never does nothing when he can help it, which is gey often, I'm thinking. The daughter's a hard working lass--sews for the gentlefolks; and she and her brither between them keep the two mitherless bairns fed. It's him we've got in the lock-up for breaking yere heid."
"Oh," said Dane, as a light dawned upon him. "Then Mary Johnstone would be the pretty, light-haired girl I saw sewing for Miss Chatterton?"
"That same, sir," answered the constable, with professional alacrity. "Miss Chatterton has missed nothing, has she?"
"Of course not!" Dane said impatiently. "I was only inquiring out of curiosity. You need not mention it. Would this coin be of any use to you?"
The official admitted that it might be; but when he appeared to smother a bovine chuckle, Dane turned upon him.
"Naething, sir," the man answered sheepishly. "I'm taken that way whiles in hot weather."
The constable furnished further particulars about the poacher's family before he departed; and Dane, reflecting that his must be the most damaging testimony against the prisoner, understood why Mary Johnstone had sent for him. It was perhaps foolish, but the child's face had attracted him; and deciding that the lot of the pretty seamstress, struggling to bring up her sisters under the conditions mentioned, must be a hard one at the best, he resolved at least to hear what she had to say.